Time waits for no bridge, especially Castle Creek’s

Mike Triplett, Blanca and Cavanaugh O’Leary, Guest Commentary Aug 5, 2024

It’s time to get over the “either/or” thinking about the entrance to Aspen. The debate is no longer “straight shot” versus a new Castle Creek Bridge or a “split shot” versus a new Castle Creek Bridge.

Today, the Castle Creek Bridge, which has served our valley for 63 years, demands our immediate attention. Aspen is singularly dependent on the bridge for business, public safety and day-to-day life.

The bridge is now past the point of repair and at risk of failure. It must be replaced in its current alignment. Our elected leaders and the Colorado Department of Transportation must act with urgency to make it happen.

The straight shot can wait, just as it always has. Time has transformed the entrance debate just as surely as it has gnawed at the rusted steel girders and cracked concrete pedestals of the bridge.

Let’s be realistic. While we are not taking a stance on the straight shot, there are insurmountable hurdles to building it anytime soon, including voter approval, state and federal funding, extensive environmental study and a handful of lawsuits.

The biggest of these is voter approval for a supersized, 122-foot-wide highway that no longer promises a light-rail transit system. The straight shot would allow just one lane of general traffic in each direction. The other two lanes are bus-only lanes that will save RFTA riders about one minute. It delivers no improvement to morning or afternoon congestion.

If the Aspen City Council kicks the can on a new bridge in favor of yet another vote, the straight shot will likely lose again for all of the following reasons:

Green space lovers, paragliders and nearby neighborhoods will fight to save our cherished Marolt Open Space, with its cross country skiing, cycling, community garden, paragliding and dog walking.

History and architecture lovers will reject construction of a highway through Aspen’s 2.5-acre historic district that includes the Holden-Marolt Ranching and Mining Museum, and removal of the historic Berger Cabin (c. 1947) at the end of Main Street — Fritz Benedict’s first Aspen home design. Both properties are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Cemetery Lane neighbors will fight to keep their “right turns” for direct downvalley access toward the roundabout to access schools, the hospital and all points downvalley. That’s right: With the straight shot there would be no downvalley turns for hundreds of local families that access Highway 82 at the Cemetery Lane stoplight. Instead they would be forced into town and routed back across the straight shot, adding yet more congestion to the backups that already exist.

West End voters will reject the new traffic light at Seventh and Main streets that would create a new pinch point exactly where traffic will merge from two lanes to one to make room for the new bus-only lanes. The light and even longer afternoon backups will motivate more people to cut through the West End.

With the straight shot, we lose one of our most-used open spaces; ruin two of Aspen’s historic properties and make life harder for at least two neighborhoods; all to make the bus ride in and out of Aspen approximately one minute faster.

Under what alternate universe does the straight shot win voter approval with all of the burdens it places on our community?

Meanwhile, the Castle Creek Bridge is falling apart literally before our eyes. Jacobs Engineering reports that the multimillion-dollar rehabilitation work completed in 2018 may need to be redone. Enough with the annual Band-Aid measures that cost millions and close the bridge for weeks at a time, worsening traffic on Highway 82, McLain Flats and through the West End.

The city council should move aggressively to activate CDOT, and design, fund and build a new Castle Creek Bridge right where it is. Jacobs Engineering has presented the city with a plan to keep two lanes of traffic open across the bridge throughout the construction process. No detours. No lengthy delays. Just “minimal impact” on traffic. In the end we get a new, three-lane bridge that can serve our community for decades.

Aspen can’t afford to wait. The economic and public safety consequences of a bridge failure here would be disastrous. Just look at Gunnison’s struggle since the mid-April failure of the Blue Mesa Bridge on Highway 50 — a bridge built two years after the Castle Creek Bridge!

Please, city council, get on with the job at hand and rebuild our bridge now.

Mike Triplett is a longtime Aspen resident and member of the West End Pedestrian Safety Group. Blanca and Cavanaugh O’Leary are longtime local residents who are active in local, state and national politics.