Interstate 70 is more than just a freeway serving the Denver Metropolitan Area. It is essentially a 2,151 mile land bridge that connects Fort Cove, Utah to Baltimore, Maryland while serving major cities including Denver, Kansas City, Saint Louis, Indianapolis, Columbus, and Wheeling.
The reason that I am writing this review is because I have spent some time on Interstate 70. In 2017, it carried me to and from Denver International Airport and up to the Rockies. As it turns out funny enough, this year it carried me between Saint Louis International Airport and downtown Saint Louis. My relationship with I-70 goes back to the late 1990s when my brother lived close to it in Terra Haute Indiana. During those years we'd ride it in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana when we'd do the drive from Long Island, NY to Terra Haute, Indiana.
From our time driving on I-70 in the late 1990s to the late 2010s, one thing that has stayed consistent is that I-70 is always playing catch up and is in a constant state of construction. I think one of the major problems is that it should of been built a 6 to 8 lane road where topography permits. I write this because whenever there has been paving work in certain regions, a major east to west Interstate is reduced to one lane of traffic each direction. For a major continental Interstate that is unacceptable. I remember sitting in a brutal traffic jam in rural Ohio on account of this. Fast forward to Denver, it was obvious that the freeway could not handle the traffic capacity. It felt like that any moment one additional car merging onto the freeway could cause a standstill. I could only imagine what rush hour is like at the mouse trap interchange (in Las Vegas we call our multi interstate interchange the Spaghetti Bowl). In the next few years Denver I-70 traffic will only get worse when the freeway is torn apart for the Central 70 project that will lower it 30 feet below ground with numerous improvements. This summer when we rode it in Saint Louis, it was under construction northwest of downtown. Here, the major project is a reversible lane.
In the mountains, whether it be the Rockies or the Appalachians I have my fond memories of I-70. Up in the mountains away from the cities and suburbs, it is an engineering marvel that has bridged Colorado and Southern Pennsylvania. Examples of these highway engineering marvels include the Swell in Utah, Glenwood Canyon, and Eisenhower Tunnel which has the distinction of being the highest point of the Interstate system. The scenery that I-70 climbs and transverses in the Rockies and Appalachian Mountains is just breathtaking.
I-70 is more than a 2,150 mile concrete bridge connecting ten states and several cities such as Denver and Saint Louis. For the purpose of this review, it is a literary bridge that connects my final Summer 2017 Denver vacation review with my leading Summer 2018 Saint Louis vacation review. read more
