Highway Hick: Illustrating the I-70 Boondoggle’s Fearless Leader
What does a governor who won’t stop a zombie highway boondoggle look like?
Brad Evans, who founded the rapidly growing “Ditch the I-70 Ditch” Facebook group, imagines something like this. “I did it because, really, Streetsblog came up with that ‘Highway Hick’ name and I just felt like someone needed to put a picture to it,” Evans said. “It’s designed to grab people’s attention.”
Evans commissioned a cartoonist to draw Hickenlooper as Highway Hick after the governor came out in proud support of the highway widening that will generate more traffic and pollution for decades to come.
The $1.7 billion, four-lane expansion through north Denver won’t get built without a fight. It’s under legal pressure from the Sierra Club, and U.S. PIRG named it one of the country’s most wasteful highway projects. Nearby residents are speaking out about the gash it will leave on their neighborhoods and showing what a city-friendly alternative looks like.
Hickenlooper didn’t start the boondoggle, but he apparently wants to be the guy who finishes it.
“It’s just that we’re buying this hook, line, and sinker and Hickenlooper is one of the driving forces behind it,” Evans said. “He could stop it, he could change course, but he’s for it. This is our response.”
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