Better road options not yet considered
Amory B. Lovins, Guest Commentary
For the second time in three months, local residents are being asked to disenfranchise themselves on an issue vital to the community’s future — both times based on false information and government staff-steered processes.
The current proposal is to bring more cars (some from the future Lumberyard housing development and airport expansion projects), still in a single lane each way, and at similar or lower speed, via a new four-lane bridge into downtown Aspen where there’s no place to drive or park them. Roaring Fork Transportation Authority buses’ spectacular success would be reinforced by two new bus-only lanes, but offset by two new bottlenecks — a Hickory House red light and the Cemetery Lane runaround.
This 1990s mass-transit plan leaves car and truck traffic the same or worse. In a bizarrely illogical return for no traffic fix, locals are asked to give the Colorado Department of Transportation free rein forever to build any roads they want over precious open space. All conditions voted by the people in 1996 and put in CDOT’s 2002 easement, such as cut-and-cover (putting the new roads underground) and final city right of approval, would vanish. Dwindling highway funding and climate emergency, meet zombie thinking.
Why move the highway? To avoid, we’re told, a business-killing, four-year alternate-single-lane rebuild period for the Castle Creek Bridge, which would revert to a city street, presumably to be rebuilt and maintained at city expense. But it needs fixing regardless, and can readily add a precious bonus lane. Jacobs Engineering says it’d need two construction seasons, with two lanes always open and “minimal traffic disruption” during “every phase of construction.” So the objection is bogus.
Moreover, Jacobs Engineering seems to have overlooked newer alternatives for “fast-track bridges” whose high-performance materials (metal or rustproof advanced composites) replace massive steel-reinforced concrete and novel construction methods slash construction times. One such Toronto bridge of comparable size was installed in two days. Dozens of such light, strong, durable, beautiful bridges are in successful service in Europe and the U.S. Innovative leaders at CDOT are interested. An outstanding global designer of scores of such bridges would be happy to help as soon as city council is ready for a site visit.
The 1998 plan, now risen again, rightly anticipated innovations in public transit technologies, but today’s discussion ignores them all, including many right-sized for Aspen. Autonomous shuttles like Beep are in revenue service in cities like Orlando. Robotaxis like Waymo are ubiquitous in San Francisco. Doppelmayr installed 85 ropeway transit systems worldwide last year alone — 26 in North America — and they’re being considered in a dozen U.S. cities. This year, Whoosh is building a destination-on-demand cable network in congested Queenstown, New Zealand. And CyberTran’s ultralight, compact, pillar-borne rail system (manyfold cheaper than light rail) would have been, as I proposed in 1990, a better idea than four-laning Highway 82. Transit for compact communities has undergone huge innovation since 1998. Let’s see what it can offer.
What about emergency egress? Evacuating tens of thousands of cars to the west, plausibly straight into fire borne by prevailing westerly winds, is hard and slow. But it’s also a poor plan, debunked by three Aspen wildfire experts — Jack Simmons, Angie Davlyn and Ali Hammond. Aspen’s fire-resistant forest composition (mainly aspens) enables a thoughtful suite of better solutions that exploit existing and new fire-resistant buildings and defensible open spaces. A new premade carbon-fiber pedestrian-bike bridge could be airlifted onto premade piers to augment western escape routes without disturbing Castle Creek’s sensitive riparian zone. Speaking of which, Aspen’s best wildlife expert, Tom Cardamone, found the straight shot’s claimed wildlife benefits imaginary and wildlife harm likely.
There’s no good reason to adopt the straight shot and just let the state build it. There are many compelling reasons not to. If I could vote in Aspen, I’d vote yes on 1 and no on 2. I’d give the city time and input to update its environmental impact study, starting with “purpose and need,” so locals’ many good proposals can be considered alongside modern ways to fix the vital bridge. The folks who didn’t get this done for the past three decades should stop trying to stifle new thinking, start telling the truth and get out of the way.
Amory Lovins lives in Old Snowmass and teaches advanced energy efficiency in Stanford’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.