Anna Stonehouse/The Aspen Times
For the second time in less than a year, city crews will make fixes on the Castle Creek Bridge, with four days of road repair scheduled for the week of Oct. 7.
Instead of patch work, the city will put down new asphalt on both lanes of the bridge, the city said in a news release Friday. The city spent $4.65 million to refurbish the road and widen the sidewalk in 2018.
Funding will be utilized from existing project contingency funds and the project will not be required to ask the city for additional money, said Tracy Trulove, communications director for the city.
The detours will be the same as in 2018 when the bridge work took about four months bookended before and after the summer season. Downvalley traffic will be detoured via Sixth Street to Power Plant Road. Traffic coming into town will continue to use Castle Creek Bridge with intermittent holds for outbound buses.
From Oct. 7 to 11 (weather permitting), crews will mill both lanes of the bridge deck and lay new asphalt.
In March, city crews had to fix a large pothole that developed on the downvalley side near the end of the bridge. This summer, a pothole has grown on the inbound side of the bridge.
“The design and construction team worked together to evaluate options based on overall efficacy,” Pete Rice, the city’s senior project manager for the engineering department, said in the news release. “The selected approach is the best option for addressing the pavement peeling issue on the Castle Creek Bridge before winter begins.”
As with last year’s detour, buses will continue to use the bridge during the detour and inbound traffic will be stopped to let buses over the bridge. The Eighth Street bus stop will remain open, but the Sixth Street stop will be closed.
“It’s important to note that we placed the asphalt last year in the same fashion as it was placed historically,” Trulove said in an email, “but with this change of adding an additional layer of asphalt, it will increase the strength and lifespan of the asphalt on the bridge deck and lessen the need for future maintenance.”
Updates will be announced via travel advisory and the city’s road closures and Construction NotifyMe email and text alerts (sign up at cityofaspen.com/notifyme). For more information on this work, contact the project team at 970-340-4334 or engineeringhelp@cityofaspen.com.