April 14, 2022
Thursday PM

Letter to Editor

I am writing on a subject that I have written about before and that I believe is extremely important to our community. As I returned home from a recent trip, I was hugely impressed with the progress that is being made with the airport ferry ramps, waiting shelters, and enormous parking lot. The lighted welcome sign that greets you as you get off the ferry gives an immediate positive impression of Ketchikan. The design and construction of the new facilities appears to be of the highest quality. These are truly fantastic improvements for our community.

I also understand that plans are underway to expand and improve the airport terminal. This will bring more great improvements to welcome our visitors as well as improve traveling for our local community.

Unfortunately, with all of these great improvements that are occurring, I have not heard anything about solving the enormous problem of getting traffic back and forth from the airport.

When I arrived back to Ketchikan earlier this week, there were many people in vehicles picking up arriving passengers at the airport. After waiting about 20 minutes for the ferry to arrive, only about half of the vehicles were able to get on the ferry. The remaining vehicles had to wait another 30 minutes and hope to be able to get on the ferry. My thought was, what would people think if they had to wait an hour to drive away from the Seattle airport after arrival? How can we possibly be talking about expanding our terminal due to anticipated increased passenger traffic but not be figuring out how to get traffic to and from the airport?

Ten years ago there were 2 ferries operating during the busy times. How could it have been needed then and not now? A ferry every 15 minutes instead of every 30 would certainly help alleviate the problem.

What we really needed was the bridge that we lost and will most likely never get. We need to accept this and come up with other solutions to solve our Gravina access problems. I don’t understand why our borough assembly and management are not addressing this problem. I hope that enough people will speak up and ask for this huge problem to be addressed.

Sincerely,

Chris J. Herby
Ketchikan, Alaska

About:

Editor's Note:

The text of this letter was NOT edited by the SitNews Editor.

Received March 14, 2022 - Published March 14, 2022

Related Viewpoint:

SitNews ©2022
Stories In The News
Ketchikan, Alaska

Articles & photographs that appear in SitNews are considered protected by copyright and may not be reprinted without written permission from and payment of any required fees to the proper sources. E-mail your news & photos to editor@sitnews.us Photographers choosing to submit photographs for publication to SitNews are in doing so granting their permission for publication and for archiving. SitNews does not sell photographs. All requests for purchasing a photograph will be emailed to the photographer.