The 3.2-mile-long partially paved "road to nowhere" meanders from a small international airport on Gravina Island, home to 50 people, ending in a cul-de-sac close to a beach.

Crews are working to finish it. But no one knows when anyone will need to drive it.

That's because the $26-million road was designed to connect to the $398-million Gravina Island Bridge, more infamously known as the "bridge to nowhere." Alaskan officials thought federal money would pay for the bridge, but Gov. Sarah Palin killed the project after it was ridiculed and Congress rescinded the money. Plans for the road moved forward anyway.
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"Surely we won't have to commute on the highway if there won't be a bridge," said Jill Jacob, who has been writing and calling the governor's office for the last two years to protest the road. "It's a dead-end highway, a dead-end road.

A campaign led by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) to redirect the funds to a New Orleans bridge damaged by Hurricane Katrina failed. But Congress amended the legislation allowing most of the money to be used for any transportation project in Alaska.

For reasons that remain unclear, the bill left intact language requiring that $48 million be spent on "earthwork and roadway construction" for the Gravina Access Project.

According to Menzies, the Alaska DOT official, that meant the money could only be used to build projects directly associated with the $398 million bridge. The only alternative, Menzies said, was to return the money.

"I don't think there was any discussion about that," he said.

This stuff just gets crazier and crazier as you dig into it.  The money could have been used to fund repairs for a bridge damaged by Katrina, instead it goes into a road that goes nowhere.