Pitkin County agrees to contribute $200,000 to Roaring Fork Safe Passages study
The Board of Pitkin County Commissioners voted on Wednesday to approve up to $200,000 in match funding for a Roaring Fork Safe Passages study to begin this fall.
The feasibility study will determine open engineering questions like what wildlife crossing structures are needed, what the cost breakdowns are, what the permitting requirements are and what construction timelines would look like, according to Roaring Fork Safe Passages Director Cecily DeAngelo.
Roaring Fork Safe Passages discusses plans with Aspen
Thirty percent of recent vehicle crashes in the Roaring Fork Valley were due to wildlife-vehicle collisions, resulting in an estimated $5.2 million of damage.
That’s according to 2012 to 2021 data presented in Monday’s Aspen City Council Work Session by Roaring Fork Safe Passages, a local nonprofit committed to mitigating wildlife-vehicle collision risk through infrastructure projects on Colorado Highways 82 and 133.
“There’s consequences for drivers,” Julia Kintsch, senior ecologist at Denver’s ECO-Resolutions who was contracted by Roaring Fork Safe Passages, said of the impact of wildlife collisions. “There’s consequences for wildlife mortality and wildlife connectivity.”