The Daily Alaska empire., 1949-03-29
ARC TELLS OF WORK ON HIWAY5 DURING MONTHS OF WINTER

Winter maintenance of highways by the Alaska Road Commission isl performed on many main and sec ondary roads, including the Alaska the Tok Cutoff, Glenn Highway, those portions of the Richardson Highway connecting Anchorage and Fairbanks with the above, and local roads around An chorage, Fairbanks, Haines the Kenai Peninsula and elsewhere.
 Winter maintenance consists of snow clearance, ice removal, mark ing and patrolling. It is performed to the greatest extent possible with available funds. The total mileage of Alaskan roads maintained open in winter increases year Ky year. IL is now possible to drive in winter from many places in Alaska direct to the United States and to drive between many points in Alaska heretofore inaccessible at that sea- son. The object of the ARC iss to extend the mileage of usable winter roads as much as possible and ef- forts are continually being made to hat end.
 It should be understood that funds expended for snow removal in winter are lost when the snow melts in the spring. It is therefore impracticable to use funds required for summer maintenance, and for permanent improvement of the roads, upon snow clearance if by so doing summer maintenance must be neglected and the roads allowed to deteriorate. The per manent improvement of all the roads of Alaska is the constant ob- ject of the Alaska Road Commis- sion.
 SNOW CONDITION STUDY
 This year a new study of snow conditions was made and funds were requested by the Alaska Road Commission to attempt to main tain Thompson Pass open during the winter of 1949-50. Thompson Pass, on the Richardson Highway near Valdez, is the most difficult and suffers from the worst snow conditions of any mountain pass traversed by a main road in Alaska. Any effort to keep it open would he very costly and quite experi- mental. Also, the traffic that would use the road in winter is uncertain. In an effort to deter mine the use that would be made of the road, a public hearing was held in Fairbanks on December Is, l948, by Col. John R. Moves, Com missioner of Roads for Alaska. At that hearing it was emphasized that funds would have to be sought before any work could be per- formed
 The request for funIs received the support of the Department of the Interior, and Army support was also sought and was received, but the request was not in accord with the present budgetary plans of the President. Due to lack of funds. therefore, it will not be possible to keep Thompson Pass open next winter although, as usual, every effort will be made to keep it open as late in the fall as possible and to open it as early as possible in the spring.
 ON MAIN HIGHWAYS
 Expenditures of Federal funds for winter maintenance are con- fined to the main highways, but this does not limit the appropria- ton of Territorial and local funds for winter maintenance. The Alaska Road Commission funds are prin- cipally Federal, and hence the bulk of it's snow clearance activities are directed in keeping the main high ways open. The Alaska Road Con- mission can, however, use Terri torial and local funds for snow re- moval if the funds are made available to it. Allotments of Ter ritorial road funds are made by the
 Territorial Highway Engineer
 whose headquarters are in Juneau
 Arrangements for snow remova
 with local funds on roads moi regularly kept open with Fedora funds can be made with the Alaska Road Commission in appropriate cases if local funds are available