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Tempe pushes for 24 lanes on Broadway Curve
Plans calls for connector freeways to run alongside I-10

Bob Golfen
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 16, 2007

A remedy for Interstate 10's notorious Broadway Curve in Tempe, one of the worst freeway bottlenecks in the Valley, will not come easily. Or soon.

But while designers and engineers at the Arizona Department of Transportation wrestle with the complex project, Tempe officials are growing impatient.

Air pollution from idling cars and trucks stuck in rush-hour traffic, along with city streets crowded with commuters trying to avoid the freeway mess, are prompting calls for acceleration of the I-10 widening project, which is not slated to begin until 2011.

The concept for the I-10 improvements now being studied call for additional "local lanes" to be built alongside the current freeway to serve as connector routes between U.S. 60, Tempe, east Phoenix and Sky Harbor International Airport. In some areas, the total lanes on and around I-10 will total 24, double the number of current lanes.

Nearly 300,000 vehicles pass through the area daily, fed by heavily traveled U.S. 60 and Arizona 143, a major access route to Sky Harbor, along with through traffic on I-10 heading to and from downtown Phoenix.

On Thursday evening, Tempe council members met with ADOT representatives to discuss the project and its implications.

"The problem we face is that when the U.S. 60 was expanded to its widest width through Tempe, we were promised that ramps would be built and the Broadway Curve would be widened to handle more traffic," Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman said.

The immediate traffic needs are being ignored as ADOT and planners at the Maricopa Association of Governments, or MAG, look far ahead to the needs of the future, Hallman said. The scope of the project has grown and the improvements have been pushed back at least three years, he said.

"I appreciate that they want to plan for the people who want to live in Maricopa and Pinal County 2030, but they are substantially undermining the quality of life for the people who are living here in Tempe now," he said.

Traffic through the freeway segment is expected to grow by half during the next 20 years, said ADOT spokesman Doug Nintzel, with projected growth putting the daily traffic load at 450,000. Freeway planners must look to the future, Nintzel said, or risk building highways that quickly become obsolete as traffic pressure increases.

"It's not that ADOT is adding on to it," he said. "The local communities have expressed a desire to make these improvements, and ADOT is working with regional planners as to what they believe should be done."

Accelerating the freeway construction would be beneficial, he added, but the complicated issues of design and engineering are still on the drawing board. And the federally required environmental study could take another two years.

In the concept plan, each local connector alongside I-10 would be a four-lane freeway in itself and would include a web of ramps designed to take local traffic off I-10. The current I-10 lanes would serve as express lanes through the area, Nintzel said, "with destinations farther down the line."

The idea is to take significant traffic off the main trunk of I-10 while simplifying the flow of vehicles through the segment.

"The ultimate goal is to try and segregate traffic to get the traffic going downtown in the correct lanes and traffic going to airport in the correct lanes to avoid all the weaving that's going on," said Bob Hazlett, senior engineer for MAG.

"This has been in the regional transportation plan for some time now as a widening project for the Broadway Curve to facilitate the ramps from U.S. 60 as well as improve the interchange at Arizona 143."