If you’re sitting in traffic on the highway into Aspen and looking for someone to blame, try Edward Royal Holden.

It’s Holden’s fault that motorists must downshift to a crawl as they navigate a pair of 90-degree turns into and out of town. Back in 1891, the mining-era prospector built a short-lived metal smelting plant, the Holden Lixiviation Works, on 22 acres abutting Castle Creek, blocking the most direct route onto Main Street. So, road crews built the original Castle Creek Bridge two blocks north instead, and the traffic-jamming S curves were born.

Or you could wag a finger at Walter Paepcke: In a letter to investors in 1952, he articulated his vision for Aspen as “quite a different vacation spot, one not dedicated to fishing alone, or riding, or skiing—but where these things might be done along with some mental and cultural exercise as well.” As celebrities, tycoons, and other VIPs bought into Paepcke’s “Aspen Idea,” housing prices soared, and displaced workers began to commute from farther away. You might be one of them. And if you’re zipper-merging at the notorious bottleneck near the airport and a Texan in the SUV next to you cuts behind the car you let in, you yowl, “Why does Highway 82, two lanes all the way from Glenwood, shrink down to one?!”

Blame Aspenites from the 1960s, who were so opposed to a Highway 82 expansion that the state transportation department decided to hold off on the Aspen section until leaders and residents could make up their minds. They never did.

By the ’90s, traffic was so bad that something had to be done. In 1998, the City of Aspen, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), and the Federal Highway Administration proposed the “Preferred Alternative,” a plan to widen and reroute that last stretch of Highway 82 through Marolt Open Space and onto a new four-lane bridge over Castle Creek connecting directly to Main Street. But it was never implemented, partly because of funding and mostly because Aspenites can’t seem to agree on anything.

Still, paid parking, dedicated bus lanes, and other improvements followed in an effort to move drivers out of their cars and onto public transit. That helped, but it was no solution. So if you’re reading this while idling in traffic somewhere on the outskirts of Aspen—instead of sitting on a bus—maybe look in the rearview mirror.

“Everyone has to participate in the solution,” says Aspen Mayor Rachel Richards, who supports the implementation of the Preferred Alternative. With room for dedicated bus lanes (and one day, maybe even light rail!), the plan could improve public transit times, which could get more people to take the bus (or train). “If everyone can start to say, ‘I am part of the problem too...and I can change this much—just this much—of my travel habits,’” then we might be onto something, Richards adds. “As much as anything, this is about the transition of Aspen from what it was in the ’60s and ’70s to what it wants to be in 2040, and how to be that ‘best Aspen.’”

In September, CDOT reinspected the Castle Creek Bridge and found the current two-lane span, built in 1961 and already a decade beyond its projected 50-year lifespan, to be in “fair” condition, and won’t prioritize a replacement until its condition deteriorates to “poor.” When that time comes, CDOT will build the Preferred Alternative, unless Aspen convinces state planners there is a better option.

As always, everybody with a gas pedal seems to have an opinion. Some Aspenites want CDOT to rebuild the bridge right where it is—maybe adding a third lane—to avoid paving through Marolt. Some want to keep outbound cars on the current route over a rebuilt Castle Creek bridge and shunt inbound traffic through Marolt and over a second new Main Street bridge. Some, like Richards, want to see something like the Preferred Alternative.

Whatever gets built, there is consensus: everybody’s tired of sitting in traffic and wants something done about it, the sooner the better (the looming specter of a wildfire requiring a mass evacuation only adds to the urgency).   

To that end, a grassroots coalition of big-picture thinkers wants to bypass bureaucracy with a holistic, citizen-led Entrance to Aspen review, issue its recommended solutions within a year, then fast-track implementation. 

“We cannot wait more years for action.... Our community deserves a credible, new initiative—led by a diverse group of thoughtful, respected community members—to analyze past traffic studies, review current and emerging mobility options, understand our true wildfire threat, and achieve consensus on how best to address our challenges,” former Aspen Mayor John Bennett and former Pitkin County Commissioner George Newman wrote in a call-to-action op-ed in the spring. “So far, over decades, no government has succeeded at this kind of comprehensive, cross-jurisdictional planning and implementation on its own.... It’s time for a fresh, new, citizen-led approach to speed things up.”