"But Lois Epstein, Arctic program director for The Wilderness Society, disputed the idea, which, she said, needs to be publicly vetted across Alaska. The state needs its money to maintain existing infrastructure, she said."
Ms. Epstein, Alaska is a young and sparse state with a mandate from the feds to live as much as possible off our own resource development.  We still need major road improvements to safely connect more communities in this state, without the prohibitive cost and  inherent weather danger of air travel. Roads and resources mean jobs.. another nifty side benefit..

That might not be an important item to you but is it to most thinking Alaskans I would guess.  We need roads Epstein.   We have enough off-limit federal land. These roads are being studied to concentrate on the needed ones.  Your view is totally unreasonable as I`m guessing most of any road would be on state or native and not federal land. Alaska lives or dies reasonably using our resources.  That means roads.