Posted on 03/12/2017 7:14:00 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
DENVER — Each morning Yadira Sanchez and her three children awaken to the roar of traffic and the plumes of exhaust that spill from the highway that cuts through their neighborhood.
Now, Ms. Sanchez and her family are confronting a plan to triple the width of this state’s main east-west artery, sending tens of thousands more cars by their door.
Denver was the fastest-growing large city in America in 2015, with a population of nearly 700,000, and the scene of a tech and marijuana boom that has drawn 1,000 new households a month. But as in other cities, its highways have not kept up with development. Many roads are crumbling, leaving officials with decisions that will have lasting effects on the families living nearby, including residents of Elyria-Swansea, a low-income and overwhelmingly Latino community still reeling from the road’s construction back in 1964.
Colorado is one of many states continuing to grapple with the legacy of the 1956 Federal Aid Highway Act, which laid the map for thousands of miles of interstates. It also sent many highways rolling through black, immigrant and low-income urban communities, saddling people from the Bronx to Los Angeles with pollution, disease and blight.
With growing support for infrastructure overhauls across America — President Trump has vowed to “streamline and expedite” road and bridge projects — the expansion here could serve as a harbinger for communities facing similar choices in the months ahead.
The $1.17 billion plan for Colorado’s Interstate 70, which links the airport, downtown and ski resorts to the west, calls for the demolition of 56 homes and 17 businesses. In their place, engineers will lay tolled express lanes available to those who can pay for a faster commute.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Highway widening is always irrelevant.
Big money bribes Govt to build highrise apartments which clog highways.
Tax all buildings above 2 stories.
Fake highway like the north south I-25. Bait and switch to install an electric rail train. POS.
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Where was that?
Yes, N/S 25 is horrible from Fort Collins clear through ‘Springs. I avoid that mess when I can. Thankfully I don’t get up that way often anymore, maybe once a year. That’s plenty of jangled nerves from tailgating 2 feet apart at 75 mph! No exaggeration either.
The highway was not deliberately routed through an impoverished neighborhood. The neighborhood near the highway was less desirable, and therefore less expensive than other neighborhoods. Over the decades lower income people accumulated there.
If the highway had originally been routed through a ritzy neighborhood 60 years ago, it would be a slum today.
The NYTimes needs to get writers who understand economics. This is a completely natural phenomenon and not a plot against the poor.
I agree. “Marijuana boom” had me laughing.
A NY Times article, with a slant. Worthless reporting. I doubt if the reporter has ever even been to Denver.
Made my last trip ever through Denver two weeks ago on a Saturday. I’ll never go back. An absolutely miserable horrible place to drive. It is like all the people in Colorado live in a great strip center that runs from Fort Collins to Pueblo and they all live in the dirt in front of the mountains. What the hell will they do for water with all the growth? It reminded me of califorina.
And I'd bet a cookie these same people supported Obambas endless reckless chain immigration policies. The more the merrier right?
“It is like all the people in Colorado live in a great strip center that runs from Fort Collins to Pueblo and they all live in the dirt in front of the mountains.”
That’s correct: we do almost all live in that great strip you describe, and it actually has a name: it’s called the Colorado Front Range, and the reason that most of us must live in this strip is because all of our water comes from snow-melt in the Rocky Mountains that funnels out of the mountains into a variety of rivers, stream, canals, and tunnels onto the eastern plains and it doesn’t run very far to the east before it peters out and gets all used up. Further east than where the water goes is nearly unpopulated - because there is almost no water.
Denver is certainly Spanish: in Spanish it is de Enver, meaning "of the enver". Not sure exactly what an enver us but it may actually be spelled envir, from the same root as environment.
California, the Loma Prieta quake of 1989.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_Street_Viaduct
Every time that Japan or Korea gets a major shaker, they have a very good chance of having one of their multi-level highways collapse.
Even when they’re not collapsing, elevated roadways of this type have some serious safety issues such as evacuation during fires or large traffic accidents. Accidents on one level often shut down both levels due to leaking fuel, etc. Also, higher elevated roads have a much greater chance of killing people in accidents when their vehicles go over the sides.
Basically it’s a bad idea.
They need to slash an artery or two.
I never did Austin enough to remember whether I wanted the high road or the low one, and the choices weren’t marked far enough in advance to make an informed choice.
I am convinced that every traffic engineering program in the state should be shut down, and all of the engineers at TxDot should be fired. It doesn’t take much driving in other states to realize that the basic design fundamentals in Texas are just wrong, and are totally lacking in simple common sense.
>>Actually, yes. It’s called “induced demand.” When a road is made better (by adding more lanes, for example), more people who previously found some other way to go (took the bus, used other routes, drove at off-peak times) start to use the expanded road.
It’s I-70. The other routes are even worse.
“What the hell will they do for water with all the growth?
Bribe for and/or steal the water from the farmers in the Arkansas and San Luis Valleys.... That’s what...
MFO
Better stick to buses...
You’re not even close to having even a scintilla of highway engineering design and maintenance experience in snow country, do you.
“Ugly as sin” sort of gives the agenda away.
Guilty as charged. I am not a highway engineer or a maintenance expert. But I do know this: (1) other snow-belt cities have depressed highways, so it must be feasible to clear snow from them. (2) Find me anyone, anywhere, who doesn’t think an elevated freeway through a major city isn’t anything less than “ugly as sin.”
So what’s your solution to improve the traffic flow on I-70 AND improve the environment of the immediately surrounding area?
#6 PBS still runs shows here in Los Angeles about the Angel stadium being built in 1965 that tore down a “working class” neighborhood called Chavez Ravine filled with Latinos.
Amazing construction photos.
http://waterandpower.org/museum/Baseball_in_Early_LA_Page_2.html
Thanks for that link, hadn't seen those photos. Amazing indeed!
This obvious racial and social indignity needs to be counteracted... put up wind farms off of Martha’s Vineyard! Those white privileged bass turds!
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