[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

PING.

[Ultra Sonic 007]

Here’s one for the Colorado ping list

[HarleyD]

Given these factors, Unite North Metro Denver "proposed an alternative in place of the elevated highway," the report goes on. "A tree-lined boulevard, with roundabouts instead of interchanges, would re-establish the community grid, free up land for development and raise property values."

Yeah, a tree-lined boulevard with roundabouts in place of a major highway?!? Probably with traffic lights every 300 feet. I'm sure that would speed the commuters to their destinations. (BTW-I absolutely hate roundabouts.)

[mountainlion]

Why is it that dEnver has the worst drivers that expect the best roads while the rest of the state is stuck with bad roads and high taxes that go to denver.

[exDemMom]

I do not understand. It seems to me that the neighborhoods would be much safer with the traffic diverted onto a freeway rather than on surface streets. Wherever there are insufficient thoroughfares, traffic will go through residential neighborhoods. That can’t be good for safety, crime prevention, or property values.

[Bonemaker]

Driving around/thru Denver is a freaking death trap.

[BobL]

Colorado must have more money than they need to moving into this area.

[PAR35]

Big push by the rich leftists in Dallas to tear down the expressway through town so that travelers have to detour through the ghetto to get from Oklahoma to Houston.

They have the backing of developers who want to get their hands on the real estate.

[gogeo]

Activist tripe.

[Teacher317]

[Teacher317]

Ben Crowther, a transportation fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Congress for the New Urbanism and overseer of the organization's 2019 "Freeways Without Futures" study that included I-70, emphasizes that "it's never too late to stop a highway project."
Indeed, Crowther reveals, "I have tracked 37 different examples of highway projects that were being built through urban environments that strong community opposition eventually halted." These findings are compiled in a separate CNU offering, "Never Too Late to Stop the Bulldozer."

It stuns me how many people exist purely to try to stop projects of any kind.

Notice that they don't give any reason to stop them... just that they must be stopped.

[sphinx]

I've not been in Denver for years and last drove I-70 that far west … well, Khal Drogo was still roaming the Great Plains. That said, interstate highways (and other big arterial roads) are ugly, noisy, dangerous, dirty and degrade the areas through which they pass. Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, not enough was done to mitigate these effects in the early decades of interstate construction. In addition, the early planners did not adequately assess the tendency of interstates to generate awful sprawl along their corridors. Without careful planning, they create a lot of problems. These are magnified considerably when an interstate runs through an already developed area.

So what to do? We need the interstates and they sometimes need to be renewed, expanded and modernized. I'm not suggesting that we wave a magic wand and make them go away. BUT: we should be prepared to spend what it takes to mitigate neighborhood impacts and carefully plan interstate driven sprawl. These costs should be factored into the cost of the road. The roadbuilding lobby tends to think it should be able to spend every penny on road construction and that mitigation is a luxury item to be paid for in the sweet bye and bye, preferably by someone else. That gets in backwards.

If I had a magic wand to wave, I'd require all urban interstates to run through tunnels. Maybe when AOC is president and everything becomes free, we could do this. Until then, I presume this would be prohibitively expensive.

Noise mitigation is important. So is landscaping. What this will mean will depend on the neighborhood. The interstate should not be allowed to severely disrupt the regular street grid for local traffic. This implies frequent crossing points. I don't care whether the interstate is elevated with an underpass every couple of blocks, or alternatively, the builders pay for frequent overpasses for cars, pedestrians and cyclists. Just make sure it gets done. The interstate must not be allowed to become a barrier. Expensive, yes, but if you aren't willing to pay the freight, keep your hands off other people's neighborhoods.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Report: Expanding I-70, One of Nation’s Worst Urban Freeways, Is out of Step With Polis’ Goals (4/3)