CARBONDALE —Speedier bus service in the Roaring Fork Valley will require rapid construction first.
Work on the infrastructure for the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority’s bus-rapid-transit system is about two-thirds complete overall but still requires the completion of some major projects on both ends of the valley and in the middle. With the arrival of spring, the final push is on.
“It’s going to be a race to the finish from here on out,” Mike Hermes, bus-rapid-transit project manager, told the RFTA board of directors Thursday at a meeting in Carbondale.
Motorists and bus riders are seeing construction on Highway 82 at the Aspen airport, where installation of a pedestrian underpass has only just begun, to be followed by construction of bus-rapid-transit stations on either side of the highway. The underpass is not a RFTA project, but it must come first.
The upvalley bus station at the airport has been relocated to the airport frontage road, and RFTA buses are now detouring off the highway there; they will continue to do so until the new station is built.
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