With Kinross mining trucks here, the company should show how it will handle the corners

Kinross is a chief sponsor of “Emergency Preparedness and Youth Safety Day” this Saturday at the Carlson Center from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The Canadian mining company will be giving away bike helmets, which are important for road safety and preparedness.

What’s also important for road safety and preparedness is to demonstrate that the company’s new 95-foot truck and trailer combinations can handle all the corners and intersections on the ore-hauling route from Tetlin to Fort Knox.

Among others, the turns at Peger Road, the Johansen Expressway and the Steese Highway bypass at Chena Hot Springs Road need to be checked. In addition, Kinross should demonstrate how its trucks will turn off Farmers Loop and onto the Steese Highway during the years when the Steese-Johansen intersection will be closed for construction.

The state plans to build a temporary bypass from the Johansen through the bog up to Farmers Loop, so the trucks will have to use the Farmers Loop intersection to get back on the Steese.

The trucks, when loaded, will be too heavy for the Steese bridge at Chena Hot Springs, so they will have to get off the Steese to cross the intersection. The trucks might be able to handle the roundabout, but that has not been road tested.

It’s not likely that the roundabout can be used in the winter unless there is a significant increase in maintenance and the elimination of snow berms in the roundabout. The Dunleavy administration, which has acted like a Kinross partner, has not addresed this matter.

It is also a matter of road safety for Kinross to have its trucks on the road before it snows, so that local drivers will get a sense of how traffic patterns will change and when and where it is safe and where it is dangerous to try to pass 95-foot trucks.

Kinross says the ore-hauling project is a “attractive, high margin” undertaking as it expects to make close to $1,000 per ounce of gold for five years.

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