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OPINION
THE MESA TRIBUNE | JULY 25, 2021
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ADOT chief: Plan now for Broadway Curve project BY JOHN HALIKOWSKI AFN Guest Writer
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hink about this for a moment: Over the course of a month, the number of people who drive on Interstate 10 in the Broadway Curve area between Baseline Road and 40th Street is nearly as large as the entire population of our great state. But even that incredible number doesn’t suf�iciently explain the importance of the I-10 Broadway Curve area – or the 11 miles of I-10 between the Loop 202 (Santan/South Mountain Freeway) and I-17 – in the metroPhoenix area’s transportation network. I-10 is a key commerce corridor that connects our state with the rest of the nation. More than 4,600 businesses are located along the corridor, including 50 of the region’s largest employers. Millions of Arizonans and visitors use I-10 to reach Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. This month, the Arizona Department
of Transportation will begin preliminary work on one of the largest projects in our history to reconstruct and improve this essential freeway and several of its major interchanges. • Between now and the end of 2024, we’ll make many important changes to I-10 in the area of the Broadway Curve, including: • Increasing the capacity of the roadway by adding travel lanes. When we’re �inished, I-10 will have six standard travel lanes and two HOV lanes in each direction between 24th Street and US 60 Superstition Freeway and four lanes and an HOV lane in each direction from US 60 to Ray Road. • Creating something new: CollectorDistributor roads that will improve driver safety and traf�ic �low by separating local traf�ic entering and exiting the highway from the “through” traf�ic on I-10 between 40th Street and Baseline Road. • Replacing the interchange with State Route 143. The �inal con�iguration will include new bridges, four new ramps connecting I-10 and SR 143 and a new Broad-
way Road bridge. • Improving the interchange at US 60 so drivers can choose whether to use the general-purpose or Collector-Distributor roads. Our team has been working for more than two years not only to develop this project, but also to inform the community about what is ahead. We’ve met with businesses and business leaders; town, city and county of�icials; leaders from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, freight and transit; and hundreds of others to share our plans. We’re working with emergency responders to make sure they can respond safely and quickly during construction, and reaching out to special-event venues so we can avoid con�licts with major events planned in the Valley in the next few years. You can help, too. Any project this large in this busy of an area will require a signi�icant number of times we will need to close the freeway in one direction or the other, or at least restrict a few lanes.
You can start thinking now about how you’ll get where you need to go if I-10 in the Broadway Curve is closed or too congested because of lane restrictions. The more we plan ahead, the more we can minimize the inconvenience. We’ll do our part, too. We have a website with current information about the project at i10BroadwayCurve.com. While you’re there, sign up to receive email alerts about construction work, lane closures and detour routes. You can also learn more about our free mobile app, The Curve, which provides real-time traf�ic conditions and more. You can call us on the Bilingual Project Information Line at 602.501.5505 or email us at Info@i10broadwaycurve.com. We’re going to do everything we can to provide a great project for Arizona’s future, safely, on time and on budget. We appreciate your help and support in accomplishing this major project. John Halikowski is director of the Arizona Department of Transportation. ■
NBC. The athletes’ desire to tie personal politics to performance. And the changing position of America in the eyes of neighbors near and far. Olympic TV was a staple once, with Jim McKay, Al Michaels and experts like Donna De Varona narrating. Every night at prime time, we’d all gather before the Zenith. In 1976, ABC broadcast 76 hours of coverage from Montreal. NBC won the broadcast bidding in 2014. They’re planning 7,000 hours of coverage from Tokyo, boasting they’ve created “the biggest media event ever.” To �ill this broadcast abyss – and justify nearly $8 billion investment in broadcast fees – NBC now focuses less on sports and more on storylines, making every athlete a hero out of Marvel comics. The U.S. is sending 600 competitors to these Games. To hear NBC tell it, each of them has led a life of systemic deprivation
and loss, full of tragedies physical, emotional, personal or societal. If it sounds like I’m minimizing the struggles of my fellow Americans – well, I am. None of us has it easy in this life, nor should we expect to. Success in any endeavor is hard: That’s why when you perform an Olympic feat, you get a gold medal before the world. Turning the Olympics into a 7,000-hour “After School Special,” numbs the viewer the way formulas always do. When every story feels the same – when we all know the plot – no story feels signi�icant. The same can be said of social justice protests: Familiarity breeds disinterest. This summer, I followed the story of Sha’Carri Richardson, America’s fastest woman, suspended from the U.S. Olympic Team after testing positive for marijuana. I agree with President Joe Biden on this one:
“Rules are the rules,” was how he put it. Where I lost the thread was when Richardson’s suspension became evidence of racism. As USA Today headlined, “Opinion: Sha’Carri Richardson’s positive marijuana test one example of how anti-Blackness triumphs in sports.” And Rep. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez weighed in: “The criminalization and banning of cannabis is an instrument of racist and colonial policy,” she said, calling for Richardson’s ban to be overturned. You can feel it building as these games begin: The smashing of an all-time record for protests against every -ism worth detesting. While I share many of those dislikes, where I change the channel is when the protesting feels endless. Turns out, I only have so much hate in me. Sometimes I just want to watch great athletes compete with-
This year’s Olympics promises lots of low lights BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ Tribune Columnist
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elayed a year by a global pandemic, the XXXII Olympiad has commenced in Tokyo. As a child, I would’ve been thrilled, anxious, mesmerized. How many gold medals would America win? Who would emerge as the Games’ next big star, our next Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis or Mary Lou Retton, our next Florence Grif�ith-Joyner or Bruce Jenner? Now, I can barely summon the energy to care. The Olympics just aren’t the same. Of course, neither is Bruce Jenner. Everything changes, often for the better, though the Olympics seem to be gasping like a marathoner hitting the wall. Why so? A few reasons. The formulaic television doled out by
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