Colorado Aims to Expand a Main Artery, but Beleaguered Neighbors Balk

The New York Times ^ | February 19, 2017 | Julie Turkewitz

[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.

[Paul R.]

Yup. Too many choices that one approaches with too little time to be sure which to take.