Guth: Let’s find alternatives to Aspen entrance woes

Aspen City Council member Bill Guth.

Opinion | Feb 20, 2025

Bill Guth | Aspen City Council

Every issue begins with a crucial first step: defining the problem you are trying to solve.

The problem we need to solve in 2025 — confirmed by 86% of locals surveyed in December — is traffic. And the Straight Shot doesn’t do a damn thing to fix it.

Rachel Richards and her Referendum 2 are myopically focused on a massive and expensive superhighway designed to create two new bus lanes and ramp up RFTA ridership.

In the ’90s the theory went: use traffic produced by the one-lane-in-one-lane-out Straight Shot to lure people out of their cars and onto mass transit.

Even without the Straight Shot, RFTA has become an enormous success, boasting more than five million riders annually. I value and laud this success, but I don’t believe there are tremendous further gains to be made in overall ridership. As such, prioritizing mass transit over improving traffic just doesn’t make sense anymore.

The Straight Shot features only one lane for general traffic in each direction — the same number of lanes for cars and trucks that we have now. Nothing is designed to improve the congestion — in fact, a new traffic light at Seventh and Main streets and the rerouting of outbound Cemetery/McClain Flats traffic into town will likely worsen traffic — including the dreaded West End sneak.

The Straight Shot is a seriously outdated plan from the 1990s that is not designed to improve traffic flow or congestion. It was designed with the driving factor of a valley-wide light rail system — which as we know did not and likely will not ever happen — it just does not make economic sense to build or operate.

I certainly don’t rule out using city open space when it’s in the greater public interest and I would support doing it, if it was a smart solution to traffic. The Straight Shot and Referendum 2, which is intended to lock and load that ineffective highway design, aren’t a solution.

To fix traffic, we have to look holistically at the facts on the ground today, not as they existed 30-plus years ago.

See anything new and different around town since the Straight Shot was designed in the 90s? For starters, try the expanded hospital, new public school campuses, an entire affordable housing neighborhood — some 40 families — living at the West end of Main Street.

Coming up are 300 affordable housing units at the old Lumberyard (with their 400-plus cars). There’s a new traffic light slated for a new intersection connecting the Lumberyard with Highway 82 — exactly at the biggest morning pinch point.

Revisiting the current vehicular transportation landscape is mission critical to improving traffic, and the process starts with a new Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and a “needs and purposes” section that defines the problems we are trying to solve for now and in the future.

Richards called on City Council to immediately begin a new EIS. And we’ve done exactly that. But she now asks us to believe that — after 30 years on the shelf — the Straight Shot is suddenly shovel-ready, needs no improvements, no EIS required, and funding in place. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Ironically, Richards’ Referendum 2 would handcuff the very City government she seeks to lead. It amends our home rule charter and strips our power to demand real modern solutions. It gives CDOT free reign over every inch of city land at our entrance, without limit or condition. It green-lights an outdated plan that would preclude us from improving our traffic and congestion issues.

It’s critical to understand that even if Referendum 2 is approved, the Straight Shot will not be built anytime soon. There is no money for this project, and there are many years, if not decades, of design and legal hurdles ahead. Instead, we should be spending our time as rational and logical leaders working on improving traffic flow today, improving or replacing our current bridge, and working on a new EIS that provides an Entrance to Aspen for our future that meets our current needs and gains broad community acceptance.

Please vote no on Referendum 2 and allow your leaders to continue with the smart path forward — a new EIS.

Bill Guth is an Aspen City Council member.