Colorado DOT

If you walk or bike in Denver and you’re worried about reckless, speeding drivers, the Denver Police Department has a message for you: Too bad, you’re on your own. DPD has been handing out cards to people walking and biking that rehash the same messages every American gets drilled into them starting in grade school. The … Continued

Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx recently delivered a major speech about the harm that freeway projects have caused cities, especially poorer neighborhoods that lacked the political power to stop or divert them. Nevertheless, Governor John Hickenlooper and his DOT are plowing ahead with a plan to double down on the mistakes of the past by widening I-70 by … Continued

Colorado DOT has produced a half-hour documentary about Colorado DOT saving Elyria, Swansea, and Globeville from an old highway. How does Colorado DOT come to the rescue? By building an enormous new highway, of course! This 30-minute piece of propaganda, called “Changing Lanes,” cost taxpayers $88,000 to make. The film was produced to fulfill federal historic preservation requirements, … Continued

Denver neighborhoods are changing for lots of reasons, but one of the starkest is Colorado DOT’s I-70 expansion, which will cut a wide gash across north Denver. CDOT and Governor Hickenlooper point to the shiny park and new side streets attached to the project, even though those changes are table scraps in comparison to the 10-lane highway trench. Hickenlooper even said … Continued

If Colorado DOT builds its I-70 widening project, north Denver will be saddled with more traffic, more pollution, and more disconnected neighborhoods for generations. CDOT would have you believe the widening is a done deal, but it’s not — Governor John Hickenlooper could save the city from this relic of 1950s-era transportation planning if he chooses. One window of opportunity to weigh in on … Continued

While Colorado DOT seems hell-bent on spending billions of dollars to widen I-70, it’s not too late to stop the project. If Governor John Hickenlooper says the word, the city can still escape unscathed from the state’s efforts to ram a super-wide below-grade highway through north Denver. Going through with the highway widening will have long-lasting consequences, saddling the … Continued

Engineers know that wide city streets with wide lanes are dangerous — those are the streets where people get killed by speeding drivers. But when people confronted Denver’s transportation agencies about the widening of Federal Boulevard, Colorado DOT and Denver Public Works blew off their safety concerns. Making the street safer for walking, they said, would ruin the whole … Continued

The fight over Colorado DOT’s billion-dollar-plus plan to widen I-70 is coming to a head. Many residents, especially of north Denver where the highway has spliced neighborhoods for years, have spoken against this project since around the turn of the century. They’ll bear the brunt of the additional noise and pollution, but widening the highway … Continued

Unite North Metro Denver has an idea about what to do with I-70. Instead of widening the highway and pumping more traffic into the city like Colorado DOT wants, tear it down and replace it with an urban boulevard, reconnecting the urban fabric of Globeville, Elyria, and Swansea. CDOT is pushing its billion-dollar-plus plan to reconstruct and … Continued