In the first years of the 21st century its sufficiency rating slipped to 9 out of a possible 100. It was temporarily closed to trucks while cracks in the masonry at the piers' base were repaired, restoring it to a sufficiency rating of 24. In 2004, after the municipal governments of Aspen and Snowmass decided to fund the design work, CDOT announced that it was expediting the planning process and hoped that construction would begin the following year. Traffic could continue to use the old bridge in the meantime. There were some objections to the disruption that would be caused pedestrians, since the old pedestrian bridge would have to be dismantled.