Nome Bering Street

2018
Fairbanks, Alaska
Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities

The primary purpose of this project was to rehabilitate and extend the service life of Bering Street in Nome, Alaska. Extending from Front Street to 5th Avenue, the roadway in this small city has urban characteristics, including sidewalks, curb and gutter, on-street parking, and buildings adjacent to the sidewalk. The 8-foot-wide road shoulders were badly deteriorated because of poor surface drainage, unstable soil conditions, and settlement near utility service laterals. In many places, the sidewalks were nearly unusable and was significantly below Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards. The Nome Comprehensive Plan lists street drainage as one of the highest-priority elements of improving and maintaining the city’s transportation system. RESPEC’s goal was to design improvements to keep maintenance of the system at a level that was feasible and affordable. RESPEC used the public involvement process to gain insight into the traffic in the vicinity of the store and then thoroughly analyzed potential solutions to develop an appropriate design that maintained access to the busy store while improving safety for drivers and pedestrians. RESPEC surveyors performed static Global Positioning System (GPS) and conventional control surveys and used our proven real-time kinematic (RTK) GPS and conventional total station methods to attack this complicated design survey before the onset of the harsh Nome winter weather.