The Beautiful Depot Stevens (and a few others) Built for Carnival

It's been a little over two years since we took friends downtown to catch the bus to Seward and their cruise south and my interest was piqued to check on the cruise lines.
That led to a post about how Carnival owns most of the cruise related businesses in Alaska (Holland, Princess, Sheffield Hotels) plus they have significant connections with the Alaska Railroad. (The former head of the railroad and current Port Authority Director, Bill Sheffield, sold Sheffield Hotels to Holland and his assistant became a honcho with Holland, and Stevens helped the cruise lines get a railroad depot at the Anchorage Airport and it was named after Sheffield... and much more at that old Carnival Cruise Lines post and a little more at New Pirates on the Seven Seas.)

Well, yesterday we took our visitors to the Sheffield Depot to catch their train to their Princess cruise out of Seward. Still, four years after the depot opened, the only people I know of who use it as a train depot are people who buy an Alaskan cruise. I've also heard you can rent out the depot for parties since most of the time this depot is not in use.
So dropping them off gave me an opportunity to get some pictures of this beautiful present from Ted Stevens and members of the legislature to Carnival and the Alaska Railroad.

Here are some of the passengers waiting for the train to take them to their cruise.


And here's the train waiting for the passengers to be called to the platform. Eventually a man came out and yelled, "Alllll Aboard!"

We had a little extra time so we wandered with our friends down the tunnel with the northern lights arts project and the ten or so aerial photos the Anchorage Airport over about a 50 year span. I'd forgotten about this tunnel which we used to take before all the new buildings got put up and the easy access through the station from the parking lot ended. What I also discovered was the new rental car facility, somewhere I never go since I never rent a car here.

I know Andrew Halcro complained when all the money was being spent on the railroad depot and not on a new space for the rental car offices. [Update Monday evening: Actually he "opposed the rail depot because it was built with $30 million in federal taxpayer money even though the feasibility study showed it would never be used for anything other than cruise passengers for four months out of the year." You can see more details on his thoughts here. I thought I'd linked to this, but didn't.] I have less of a problem with the rental car space. This is a feature of all airports. Every passenger has the option of using a rental car, and thus this space. It isn't dedicated to a couple of companies and their clients exclusively. Plus there's a tax on rental cars and I believe some of that was used for this space. Not sure what percent was paid that way.

But it is pretty fancy and the new parking lot is huge.

As we drove past the parking pay booths, we got this glimpse of the engine waiting above the road.

I wonder if the FBI has collected data on how money got funneled to this project. When they were lobbying for it they promised commuter service to downtown, Girdwood, and the Valley from the airport. None of which ever materialized. Sierra Club, do you feel a little sheepish now for supporting this project? Maybe you can still redeem yourselves.

We could still have a train car that went back and forth to provide service between the airport and downtown every half hour both ways. I'm sure someone has invented a fairly inexpensive, fuel efficient vehicle that can run on railroad tracks. Knowing that one had, at most, a 30 minute wait would mean that it would be an attractive alternative for passengers who needed to go downtown and people downtown needing to go to the airport.

Again, the details are all in the previous posts.