The West End's Back Door Over Castle Creek Gets Rebuilt While the Airport Is Closed

Power Plant Road leaves the West End, drops toward Castle Creek and crosses it on a concrete bridge the City of Aspen built in 1973. The deck is narrow and both approaches are steep. Most people think of it as the shortcut to Cemetery Lane and McLain Flats. In the city's own words, it is "critical secondary access in and out of the city."

That bridge is going to be replaced. The city's September 29 announcement says construction is expected to start in April 2027. The bridge has outlived its typical design service life, and engineering inspections found structural, hydraulic and scour problems. The timing is the interesting part. The work has been scheduled into the same months that Aspen/Pitkin County Airport goes completely dark for runway reconstruction. If you live in the West End, how 2027 goes for you depends heavily on one decision the city still hasn't made.

A Quiet Road That Carries a Third of the Evening Exit

On an average day, the Smuggler Bridge looks minor. Last year the EOTC installed new traffic counters around town, and Aspen Journalism, reporting in the Aspen Daily News, found that Power Plant Road averaged 1,657 vehicles a day in 2025. That's about 7% of the 22,449 vehicles entering and leaving Aspen daily, with the Castle Creek Bridge carrying the rest.

At rush hour the picture changes. A 2024 analysis by city contractor Jacobs Engineering found that up to 34% of afternoon peak traffic leaving town used Power Plant Road to skip the Highway 82 S-curves. The busiest day of 2025 was Friday, Aug. 8, when 4,428 vehicles crossed the Smuggler Bridge. That was 14% of everything moving in and out of Aspen that day. On the other side of the bridge, the McLain Flats counter near the Sunnyside trailhead averaged 2,408 vehicles a day in 2025 and peaked at 5,783 on June 12.

The town has leaned on this bridge before. During Castle Creek Bridge repairs in 2022, the Aspen Times reported that all outbound drivers were sent from downtown via Fifth Street, West Smuggler Street, Power Plant Road and Cemetery Lane. The main bridge stayed open inbound and for westbound emergency vehicles, buses and freight. So this little bridge carries much of the evening exit on a normal day and served as the whole outbound route in a pinch. That's why the city is planning around it so carefully.

Why the City Chose Replacement Over Repair

Aspen City Council approved the design phase unanimously on May 12, 2026. It awarded a $558,681 design-services contract to Engineering Operations LLC, as the Aspen Times reported two days later. The staff report behind that vote compared repair with replacement. On the numbers, the choice wasn't close.

Staff recommended accelerated bridge construction. The bridge comes out and goes back in over about a third of the time a patch job would take, with no temporary span over Castle Creek and no disruption to utilities. The design contract comes out of an existing $2.4 million Smuggler Bridge capital budget. Staff expected to ask for about $800,000 more in the 2027 capital budget and gave a preliminary total project estimate of $3.2 million. The May vote covered design only. Construction needs its own council approval. In October, the city's project manager told the Aspen Times that cost and schedule are still being worked out during design, so treat the $3.2 million as an early estimate.

The Calendar the Bridge Was Scheduled Around

The city has placed its four-month replacement inside the airport's 2027 closure. Here's how the dates line up from this week forward:

1. Oct. 19 through Nov. 24, 2026: Nighttime hauling of construction material for the airport runs on Smith Hill Way and Highway 82.
2. Oct. 28 to 30, 2026: Tentative temporary lane closures on Highway 82 for airport work on the Owl Creek corridor.
3. January 2027: The city's second public open house on the bridge.
4. 11 p.m. Sunday, April 4, 2027: The airport closes to all commercial and general aviation for full runway reconstruction.
5. April 2027: Bridge construction is expected to start, running about four months.
6. 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 19, 2027: The airport reopens.

Senior Project Manager Jack Danneberg told the Aspen Times in May that the work is meant to line up with the airport closure to reduce traffic impacts. In the paper's Oct. 12 update, construction was still expected to begin in spring 2027 "in coordination with the airport closure."

The state is planning around that same window, but for a different reason. On Oct. 15, the Colorado Transportation Commission voted unanimously to push the $100 million I-70 Glenwood Canyon Phase 8 project from 2027 to 2028. As the Aspen Times reported, CDOT expects travel to shift while the Aspen airport is closed, with more people driving between Eagle County Regional Airport and the Roaring Fork Valley. The city sees the closure as a chance to ease local congestion. The state is bracing for more cars on the road to Eagle. Fewer flights should mean less airport traffic on the Highway 82 approach, but more of the summer crowd will arrive by car, and in 2027 some of them will reach Aspen while the Smuggler Bridge is a work zone.

Other big projects will be going at the same time. The Lumberyard housing development, the Armory Hall redevelopment and the Lift One corridor are all expected to be under construction around summer 2027, according to The Aspen Local. The Entrance to Aspen project isn't part of that list. In September its team expected to send a draft reevaluation to CDOT in April 2027 and to the Federal Highway Administration in May, and no construction start was named.

What Will Actually Sit Over the Creek

The new bridge will look a lot like the old one in footprint. The city's open-house fact sheet shows two 12-foot travel lanes plus a five-foot pedestrian sidewalk. Danneberg described it to the Aspen Times after the Oct. 7 open house:

"There will be safety improvements for errant vehicle protection and pedestrian safety in the area but the function, location and size will remain mostly unchanged."

Most of the choice left is about how the bridge looks. The October concept boards showed four preliminary styles, each with a relative cost marker:

• Concrete abutments and steel railings like the existing bridge, at the lowest cost tier
• Stone or stamped-concrete abutments with metal railings, at the middle tier
• Wrought-iron railings on concrete abutments, at the highest tier
• Wood decorative railings with stone columns, also at the highest tier

According to Danneberg, people at the open house favored a "clean aesthetic," as the Aspen Times reported. The project is now in preliminary design, aiming for the 60% design milestone before the next open house.

The Decision Still Open: Full Closure or One Lane

This is the question that will shape spring 2027 in the West End, and so far the answers have shifted. The May staff report described a replacement approach that kept at least one traffic lane open the whole time. By late September, the Aspen Times reported that the city was weighing two options: a full closure, which would likely be shorter but more disruptive, or keeping one lane open during construction. The October fact sheet still warns of delays from partial or full closures. It also says local residents will keep access.

A full closure would send everyone who uses the Cemetery Lane and McLain Flats route back to the Castle Creek Bridge for the length of the job. Keeping one lane open spreads the disruption over more weeks but leaves the backup route working. In the 2025 counts, that route carried a third of the afternoon exit at its peak.

The city says it will share phasing and traffic impacts at the January 2027 open house, as design gets close to final. The Aspen Community Voice project page is where updates and the open-house date will be posted.

I'm following the Smuggler Bridge schedule along with the airport calendar, because together they will shape spring and summer 2027 for West End homeowners, renters and guests. If you'd like to talk about how the construction season fits your plans for a property here, Aspen Luxury Real Estate is glad to help. Let's Connect.