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The state Department of Transportation announced earlier this week it will revise the plan to reflect the priorities of Gov. Frank Murkowski.

But some are criticizing the seven-month period set by DOT to complete the rewrite, noting that it will not give communities time to evaluate the proposed changes.

Thursday in Haines at the 46th annual meeting of the Southeast Conference, an organization that promotes economic development in the panhandle, DOT Project Planner Andy Hughes briefed attendees on the timeline for the rewrite.

Hughes said Southeast Conference requested a revised version of the plan from DOT this summer.

In March, Southeast Conference released a report titled "Proposed Public Road and Ferry Projects," prepared by the U.S. Forest Service. The report lists proposed road and ferry projects in Southeast and examines which ones are worthy of funding.

That document is being used as a starting point for adding new projects to the transportation plan.

It is uncertain what plans in the report will make it into the final draft of the transportation plan rewrite. Hughes said maps distributed Wednesday at the convention do not represent a proposal, but constitute an inventory of options for transportation alternatives.

DOT would provide projected costs for each of the transportation projects to a private consultant hired to prepare the rewrite, Hughes said.

"We're short-staffed, but hopefully we will have the time to come up with planning-level cost estimates to provide the consultant, rather than utilizing the consultant's resources," he said.

Hughes said preliminary findings of the transportation plan update - expected to be released before the end of the year - would be presented to a committee of Southeast mayors, a committee of Southeast tribal leaders, DOT's Marine Transportation Advisory Board and the Southeast Conference.

Those findings will be put into draft form by the consultant and distributed to the public for comment by January. Public meetings will be held throughout the region, and comments will be sent back to the advisory groups for consideration.

The final plan is expected to be completed in April and sent to DOT Commissioner Mike Barton for approval, Hughes said.

This new version of the SATP will be the third rewrite of the document. The first version of the plan was released in 1980, rewritten in 1986 and updated again in 1999.

The 1999 rewrite was a three-year effort that included a telephone survey of 1,200 households in Southeast, more than 50 meetings throughout the region and more than 450 comments from the public.

Emily Ferry, with the environmental advocacy group Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, attended the three-day conference and said seven months is not enough time to devise a new plan and get comments from people throughout the region.

"They worked really hard (on the 1999 SATP)," she said. "They hashed a lot of things out and came to consensus. It was a plan that people could live with and now all of that work is going to be thrown out, and it was a plan that was supposed to last for 20 years."

Rewriting the plan every few years leaves Southeast with no real plan at all, Ferry said.

She also said none of the projects are grounded in fiscal reality, noting that other transportation projects throughout the state are still waiting for funding from the federal government.

Hughes, who has worked on every version of the plan since the first SATP was released, said computer-mapping resources and advancements in technology would help speed up the review process.

"On this schedule we recognize that three months is not a lot of time to update a regional transportation plan. While we recognize that the time is short, we also recognize that we have a wealth of information and data from the previous planning efforts ... and the U.S. Forest Service."

Murray Walsh, head of the Juneau-based consulting firm Walsh Planning and Development Services, is negotiating with DOT for the rewrite contract, which is expected to run $250,000 or more.

Walsh, a former vice president of Southeast Conference, was slated to become the organization's next president this year but handed the position to Sitka's Rob Allen, owner of Allen Marine. Walsh said holding the Southeast Conference presidency and the transporation plan contract could be perceived as a conflict of interest.

"I stepped away because I presumed that negotiations (on the contract) would be successful," Walsh said. "It wouldn't be right for me to be the main face associated with the conference this year."