A committee of community leaders is in the process of contracting transportation services to help provide ground transportation to Aspen from other regional airports while the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport is closed for eight months next year.
It’s one of several plans local officials are considering to ease complications for people traveling into and out of the Roaring Fork Valley during the airport closure (which is scheduled for April 4 to Nov. 19, 2027). Fly Aspen Snowmass issued a request for quotes in May for ground transportation services and is hoping to start contracting with some of them during the upcoming winter, Chris Miller, senior vice president of sustainability at Aspen One, said.
“I think if we do nothing, the default will be for people to rent cars and drive up to the valley, and I think we want to do something here that serves both the needs of visitors, but also locals, and do it in a way that reflects our values,” Miller said. “We want to reduce emissions. … We don’t want to contribute to congestion on Highway 82 and reducing single-occupancy vehicle trips.”
Officials from the airport, Pitkin County and the Aspen Chamber Resort Association presented the current progress of a community continuity regional leadership committee has made on planning for airport closure disruptions during a joint work session between the Pitkin Board of County Commissioners and the Aspen City Council on Monday night.
It was one of the first public looks at how officials are planning for transportation from regional airports during next year’s eight-month closure, which was still in limbo as officials waited for airlines to release their summer 2027 schedules.
Miller said the goal is to “create a suite of options that work for different people in different ways.”
Pitkin County Manager Kara Silbernagel also said they want to create a unified transportation plan.
“It’s not only getting individuals out of the single-occupancy cars. … I think we know it will take a multitude of shuttle options, but we didn’t want to have every event or every different business or whatever having their own different shuttle,” she said.
A transportation subcommittee of the community group planning for the airport closure is planning transportation from Eagle County, Denver International Airport and Grand Junction Regional Airport while Aspen’s airport is closed.
While they’re working to coordinate with existing transportation options along the I-70 corridor, like the Bustang or Amtrak train, Fly Aspen Snowmass consultant Bill Tomcich said the goal is nonstop commercial transportation from those airports to the valley, “if it’s commercially viable.”
The transportation subcommittee is also discussing last-mile connections from places like the Brush Creek Park and Ride to final destinations in the valley.
Small sections of the Brush Creek lot will potentially also serve as temporary rental car parking, Airport Director Diane Jackson told the city council and BOCC. There will be no parking on-site while the airport is closed next summer, and once it reopens, some parking will still be unavailable while work on the new terminal continues through 2029.
Aspen Councilman Bill Guth suggested prioritizing closer parking options for people using rental cars to come to the valley to minimize travel inconveniences.
Jackson also told the council members and commissioners that airport officials are in communication with officials in Eagle and Grand Junction about increasing parking needs for people driving personal cars to those airports from the valley.
There may need to be other parking for some Aspen airport employees who plan to work at the Eagle airport next summer and need to commute from the valley, Tomcich said.
“They’re very aware of the increased traffic coming their way,” Jackson said.
United Airlines was the first airline to publish its 2027 summer flight schedule to Eagle. American and Delta airlines have yet to release their schedules (Delta doesn’t fly to Eagle in the summer, but it does fly to Grand Junction), but United is “going to lean very heavily into the Eagle County Airport, where they already have gates and an existing flight schedule,” Tomcich said.
There will be 63 weekly United flights into Eagle next summer, up from 25. There will be six flights a day from Denver, up from three typically, and United is also planning to expand its flights from Chicago O’Hare and Houston Bush airports from two flights per week to every day. It will also expand its daily flights from Los Angeles International Airport to the summer months, Tomcich said.
Most of the additional flights to Eagle will arrive in the evening and leave the next morning. While it will mean people traveling out of the valley through Eagle will need to leave early in the morning to make the early outbound flights, it will help coordinate ground transportation, Tomcich said.
“The good news is, a lot of this traffic — five of the nine daily flights scheduled into Eagle next year — can be compressed into evening inbounds and morning outbonds, which, from a ground transportation perspective, is going to allow us to compress some of those scheduled ground transportation needs into probably two trips going in each direction,” he said.
People traveling to and from the airport will also be doing so against rush hour traffic in the valley, Tomcich added.
Silbernagel said the committee is leaning on things they learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Grand Avenue Bridge construction project in Glenwood Springs to guide planning for the anticipated community impacts.
In addition to the airport closure, there will also be several major infrastructure projects taking place throughout the valley. Construction on Aspen’s Lumberyard affordable housing will be well underway across the street from the airport, the Armory Hall will be under construction and dirt will be moving at the Lift One corridor.
“None of these are on their own projects,” Silbernagel said. “It’s just something, as we think about what are the overall impacts when we look at the roadways, parking, visitor beds, that we need to be planning for, and really that’s where we started to come together of how do we take this as a community effort rather than one individual project effort.”
The county will host a community town hall on July 14 to discuss the runway reconstruction and plans during the closure. It will take place from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Limelight Aspen. The public is encouraged to submit questions in advance online.