I don't know if you've been to Alaska, but a large part of the lowland is swamp that happens to be frozen most of the time. The current roads are basically a pi

I don't know if you've been to Alaska, but a large part of the lowland is swamp that happens to be frozen most of the time. The current roads are basically a pile of gravel on top of that. If the swamp is frozen for less of the time, the gravel moves more. So yes, the road was not engineered with these conditions in mind, but building a road on a swamp is not easy to do, even if engineered correctly. Barely mentioned in the article, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was built with cooling pipes to keep the ground it is built on cold. [1][2] 1. http://dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a073597.pdf http://dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a073597.pdf [pdf] 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Trans-Alaska_Pipeline_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Trans-Alas...