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Denver wants to speed up traffic at I-25 and Broadway. Neighbors say it’ll come at the cost of safety

The city has defended the plans to add more lanes at the intersection, saying it will make the area safer for everyone. But neighborhood activists disagree.

By Nathaniel Minor, Denverite

The way Brittany Spinner sees it, the city of Denver sacrificed part of her Washington Park West neighborhood to motor vehicles more than 50 years ago when it widened South Lincoln Street and Broadway to accommodate suburban drivers heading to and from downtown.

“Even though it looks like it should be walkable, it absolutely is not,” she said, adding that cars appear to routinely speed past her home on Lincoln and crashes are common.

She now fears the city is about to do something similar again. Denver is set to begin rebuilding part of the interchange of Interstate 25 and Broadway, a project that officials say will ease traffic congestion by adding more vehicle lanes.

Spinner and other neighborhood activists have been pushing city leaders for years to reshape the project to prioritize pedestrians, transit users and bicyclists. The grassroots effort appears to be paying off, as it now has the support of the city’s own citizen’s advisory panel and a member of the City Council.

City officials have defended the project, saying it will make the area safer for everyone, including pedestrians and cyclists. But Spinner and others have pushed back at that assertion, saying the rebuild further prioritizes drivers at the expense of everyone else because it adds more vehicle lanes to sections of Broadway and other streets.

Read the full story at Denverite
Skills

Posted on

January 9, 2023

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