Preserving the Health of Our Community:
The Students Perspective of the East I-70 Corridor Proposal

Contacts:
Alysia Berry, student
Olive-Ann Slotta, teacher

Office: 303-391-8961
Cell: 303-478-8961
Fax: 303-391-6311

A group of approximately 25 concerned students from Millennium Quest High School at Manual have been diligently working on the I-70 corridor proposal. The project began in early February of 2004. It originally started out with a little over 80 students and three teachers. Over the course of our three-month investigation for alternative routes that would cause less damage to the community due to the potential pollution that I-70 would cause. Teachers took two loaded school buses full of students across town to visit the areas that were already heavily polluted and would become worse if the I-70 proposal were to actually take place. This is currently still an issue that most students would like to see resolved in their favor. The eighty students were divided into fourteen different groups. Most of the groups were focusing on alternative routes for transportation both private and public. Some based their studies on the neighborhoods of Swansea, Elyria, and Globeville. These are areas that have and will be seriously affected by the pollution. Each group came up with a different proposal and narrowed it down to two, which will be presented in the brochure.

Toll Road by CAWN

The I-70 Corridor Toll Road Project was not approved by the City Council, but Colorado has a law that allows unsolicited proposals to be processed by C-DOT. Earlier this year, the transportation commission allocated $5 million to be used for an environmental impact statement on this corridor. C-DOT has been working with private contractors.
The Denver City Council unanimously passed a resolution stating its opposition to building an elevated toll road on the I-70 corridor. Since the passing of that resolution, some community activists have been building support throughout Denver, North City Park, Clayton, Jefferson Park, and Washington Park. They have all expressed opposition to the toll road.
As for the contractors, they have still not picked one yet. The E-470 toll roads charge different prices. It is $3.50 to go to Pena Blvd. It costs $1.00 to go to 96th Ave. We as a group think that they should charge about $5.00 to drive the whole toll road. So, it would be $.45 per mile for the 11-mile highway toll road.
The people that drive toll roads the most are willing to pay for the cost of the toll roads. They do not want to pay for them on the weekends when the highways aren’t as packed. This will probably not be the largest project that C-DOT ever had to do. The biggest project they did was the widening of I-25 known as “T-REX.” Its cost was $2.6 billion.
There will be 22 separate toll projects that will affect a lot of people. The areas that would be hurt if this model were used would be the Elyria-Swansea area and Globeville, which are both poor communities.
The benefits to the city of Denver from the I-70 corridor toll road would be that the toll collection would provide funding for the new lanes while offering vehicles a faster ride.

Involvement with Public Transportation

Through our rigorous RTD [Regional Transportation District] investigation we have learned a great deal about how the I-70 corridor/bridge will affect RTD employees and the people of the Denver city community. Our main source was a gentleman named Mike Turner working for RTD, an assistant for their planning and developing department. When our group had a chance to speak with him, we told him a few of our concerns. He did some research and returned our phone calls with logical answers. We have also taken a trip out there to the RTD headquarters one day before our final presentation. Throughout our research project we requested help from other regional transportation district representatives, such as Sharon Lipp. We also found information on the Internet at www.rtd.com.

We explored the local newspapers, Denver Post and Rocky Mountain, for similar issues that involved any departments of Colorado transportation. There seems to be a lot of controversy over what method of railroad transportation will be built next. The RTD department is planning on extending the light-rail for the heavily populated eastern side of Denver. It would be a lot less harmful to our environment and possibly a more geographically convenient way of public transportation. The whole project would cost approximately $800 million and roughly 11 years to build. This is to be decided by the voters of the community.

There are also ideas that the Regional Transportation District is going to develop the FasTracks railway system. There are conflicting differences on where or how far the FasTracks railing will be expanded, if built, but there are general ideas. The expected cost of this project has been estimated to $38 million and takes about ten years to build. The agency obtained all but $8 million needed to go through with the plan. This will also need a public vote before it’s considered to be put into action. Either way, all finances not granted by state and federal government will be accumulated by raised taxes for RTD and CDOT....

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