An Age-Friendly Anchorage Win!

For the last two years, the Age-Friendly Anchorage team—comprised of AARP Alaska volunteers, community partners and Anchorage community leaders—has been collecting input from the community on ideas for actions that would make Anchorage a more age-friendly place to live. While working to collect community input, the Age-Friendly Anchorage team conducted several walk audits to learn more about potential improvements for pedestrian safety in several areas of concern in the city. One of these walk audits has been a major step toward community involvement, pedestrian safety, and public-private partnership.

A walk audit at the Anchorage Senior Activity Center highlighted the challenge that pedestrians face while crossing from Chugach Manor/Chugach View senior housing and the senior center without a crosswalk. The walk audit report was presented to staff at the Municipality’s Traffic Engineering Department to explore potential solutions. Proposals included a raised crosswalk with a visual pedestrian-initiated crossing signal, speed limit and “pedestrians crossing” signage and the addition of speed humps. The Traffic Engineering Department staff agreed to initiate studies to determine the appropriate traffic calming measures. The Anchorage Age-Friendly team was advised that the study would take at least one year before any project could be considered and funded.

AARP Alaska considered this to be the perfect opportunity to host an event for the community to provide training and share ideas on how to build a temporary ‘pop-up’ to initiate lasting change. To that end, AARP Alaska partnered with America Walks for a two-day workshop, including training on transportation best practices and a how-to on walk-audits, pop-up events, and community celebrations. As part of this effort, a pop-up temporary crosswalk between the senior housing and the senior center was planned. As fate would have it, the municipality installed a permanent crosswalk and pedestrian-crossing sign just two weeks before the scheduled event!

AARP Alaska and the Anchorage Senior Activity Center hosted a crosswalk celebration on July 17th on the closed street next to the new crosswalk. Partners joined from the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, Bike Anchorage, Aging and Disability Resource Center, the Department of Transportation, Anchorage Senior Center and more. Community members used their artistic talents to create a temporary crosswalk on the senior center property using chalk, planters full of flowers and delineator posts. As an example of a pedestrian buffer, garden planters were filled to establish a separation between the sidewalk and the main driveway of the senior center.

As a grand finale, Walk America conducted a s-l-o-w bike race where the purpose of the race was to come in last, that is, to be the slowest biker in the group. It was a nail-biter of a race, but Alexa Dobson of Bike Anchorage was clearly the slowest, and the champion! Thank you to all who attended and participated in the celebration. If you would like to learn more about Age-Friendly Anchorage, please contact Patrick Curtis at 907-268-7919 or pcurtis@aarp.org.