The Interstate Highway 70 reconstruction project in Denver: repeating a 1960s planning failure?

Abstract

The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is reconstructing a ten-mile stretch of Interstate Highway 70 through central Denver, Colorado, including the removal of a 1960s-era viaduct that will be replaced by a widened below-grade segment. While CDOT, the City and County of Denver, other jurisdictions and some local organisations are supporting the preferred alternative, many residents from the Elyria-Swansea neighbourhood, a low-income minority community, are concerned about the health and environmental impacts from the construction and operation of the estimated $1.2 billion highway project. The need to replace the crumbling viaduct was an opportunity to reroute the highway through less-populated areas and to redress the 1960s plan to build the original highway through the middle of several inner-city neighbourhoods. The decision to rebuild and widen the highway in the same alignment raises numerous questions, and may be compounding an original planning failure with an even greater one. This chapter assesses both the earlier and current decision-making processes through analyses of planning documents and local discourses using sustainability and distributive justice frameworks. Findings reveal that there have been deviations away from Denver’s more recent sustainable transportation planning approach, harkening back to the 1960s-era highway-dominant orientation. A more utilitarian perspective typifies the distributive justice approach taken by CDOT in this case. While construction is in full swing, with an estimated completion for 2023, this controversial project has raised environmental justice and social equity concerns within a city and state that is committing itself otherwise to a more sustainable transport future.