Pitkin County Open Space and Trails (OST) recorded its highest number of e-bike accidents in 2025, even as the overall use of trails levels off from the COVID-era peak.
“More people are renting e-bikes when they are visiting, and rental shops are catering to that demand,” OST Ranger Manager Rick Norman said. “Additionally, many local recreational users and commuters are also choosing to use e-bikes.”
In 2025, more than 60% of the bike and e-bike accidents on Pitkin County OST’s properties involved an e-bike, as they become increasingly popular among locals and visitors. That represents the highest proportion of e-bike accidents, compared with mechanical bikes, on record. Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office, meanwhile, shows a relatively steady trend. The majority of crashes to which deputies respond still involve mechanical bikes, although two separate accident-related deaths last year involved e-bikes. The number of e-bike-related injuries treated at Aspen Valley Health is growing faster than those caused by mechanical bikes, which still cause most of the injuries requiring a hospital visit.
Class 1 pedal-assisted e-bikes, or electric bikes, and Class 2 e-bikes equipped with a throttle option that doesn’t require pedaling, can go as fast as 20 mph, while Class 3 e-bikes can reach up to 28 mph. Pitkin County allows only Class 1 e-bikes on paved or packed-gravel multitrack trails, while Aspen allows Class 1-3 e-bikes on multitrack trails but prohibits all e-bikes on sidewalks and pedestrian malls. Both Aspen and Pitkin County prohibit e-bikes on single-track dirt trails.
An increasing proportion of crashes on OST properties
The total number of accidents requiring a ranger or a first responder’s assistance and involving bikes and e-bikes peaked in 2019 with 28 crashes, according to Pitkin County OST data shared with Aspen Journalism. It dropped to 14 in both 2022 and 2023, but since 2024, such accidents have been on the rise again. In 2024, the total number of bike and e-bike accidents grew by 64% as OST responded to a total of 23 crashes. OST has responded to 24 crashes in 2025. Of those, 15 involved e-bikes, or 63% of the bike and e-bike accidents that OST rangers responded to last year.
In contrast, e-bikes accounted for 16% of the bike and e-bike accidents in 2018, a quarter of the crashes in 2019 and a third in 2020 before they started to make up over half of the crashes in 2021. At the time, Aspen Journalism reported on the growing toll of e-bike accidents, and this trend has continued.
Even when OST recorded far fewer crashes in 2022 and 2023, e-bikes still made up 57% and 43% of the accidents, respectively. The number of e-bike-related accidents more than doubled to 14 in 2024 from 6 in 2023.
“It’s hard to pinpoint accident frequency,” Norman said. “On some busy days, there are no issues, while on some slower days, there could be more. I think we’d need more years of data before we could draw any solid conclusions. But as more people choose e-bikes, it is likely that there will be more e-bike incidents.”
Since 2022, about 70% of the bike and e-bike crashes either on OST properties or to which OST rangers responded have happened on the Rio Grande Trail or nearby. In 2025, the Rio Grande Trail saw 18 of the 24 crashes on OST properties, and 18 of the 23 crashes the year before.
Norman said that although OST doesn’t have numbers on e-bike visitation, he has observed an increasing number of people riding e-bikes compared with mechanical bikes on the Rio Grande Trail during the busy summer months. He said some areas of the trail, such as the Aspen-to-Woody Creek portion, are more accident prone, with a particularly heightened risk at the Duffy’s Wiggles curves (at mile-marker 40.5), between the Hunter Creek crossing and Cemetery Lane. “[The Aspen-to-Woody Creek section] is where local recreationalists, commuters and tourists all come together on the RGT. There are also more curves, and in [the Duffy’s Wiggles area], there is a bit of an up-and-down hill on a curve,” Norman said.
The trail counter located on the upper section of the Rio Grande Trail recorded about 45,000 visits last summer, or an average of 370 daily visits, according to OST visitation data shared with Aspen Journalism. Summer visitation on this section has dropped 25% since the pandemic-influenced years of 2020 and 2021, each of which recorded more than 60,000 visits during the summer months. Visitation in 2025 was slightly lower but relatively on par with 2024’s 49,000 visits.
From June through Oct. 22, the Maroon Creek Road counter recorded around 21,000 trips, counting bikes going both to and from the Maroon Bell Scenic Area, according to compiled bike traffic data from a counter located above the entrance station that was provided to Aspen Journalism by Pitkin County. The number of bikes and e-bikes was 50% lower last summer compared with the 42,000 trips in the summer of 2022. The counter does not differentiate between e-bikes and mechanical bikes.
On average, 141 bikes and e-bikes went up and down each day to the Bells last summer. That’s down from about 291 bikes and e-bikes from the summer of 2022.
Last July recorded the highest bike visitation, with 7,364 bike trips for both directions, or an average of 238 a day. In contrast, July 2022 saw 11,393 bike trips in both directions or 368 daily. Last October saw an 82% decrease in both directions, marking the largest drop, to 886 bike visits in 2025 from 5,051 in October 2022.
The Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office responded to a total of 21 bike and e-bike crashes from 2017 through last October — 16 involving bikes and five involving e-bikes — according to data shared with Aspen Journalism. The number of such accidents triggering a sheriff’s office response has remained relatively low over the past nine years, averaging about three per year, but the sheriff’s office reported four fatal accidents in that period, including two in 2025. Both involved riders of e-bikes in single-bike accidents on Castle Creek Road.
An increasing number of severe injuries
Among the 75 bike and e-bike accidents reported by OST from 2022 through 2025, 22 led to possible head injuries; of those, 14 involved an e-bike. For 2025, OST reported nine crashes with head injuries, including seven that involved an e-bike.
The number of bike and e-bike injuries requiring care at Aspen Valley Health, formerly known as Aspen Valley Hospital, has been on a steady increase since 2019. Although most cases of a cycling accident involving hospital care still are related to mechanical bikes, the number of e-bike accidents has generally been increasing faster than mechanical-bike accidents.
From 2019 through Sept. 21, 2021, the number of e-bike-related injuries doubled, while the number of mechanical bike-related injuries grew by only 12.5%. In 2022, all 23 bike injuries were counted as mechanical bikes, but in 2023, overall bike admission grew by 83% and included five e-bike cases. Between 2023 and 2025, bike injuries grew by 5%, while the number of e-bike injuries almost doubled, with those nine admissions representing 19% of total bike and e-bike cases.
The data does not include any patient who was not transported by emergency medical services to the emergency department after they had passed away. Also, starting in 2025, data-collection methods now include any trauma activation even if the patient is discharged at home and not admitted to the hospital.
City e-bike safety campaign
Aspen Velo owner Luke Wampler told Aspen Journalism that 2020 was by far Aspen Velo’s best year and that a lot of competition in the e-bike industry had arrived since then. He said that at least five new e-bike shops popped up in Aspen between 2020 and 2022 and that Aspen Velo bought 40 new pedal-assist bikes in 2022, far more than the 20 to 30 bikes he typically purchases each year.
Since 2022, Wampler said his fleet hasn’t gotten any bigger, but he has noticed an increase in the number of e-bikes in town. “What irks me is that every hotel now seems to have their own fleet of e-bikes despite not having the knowledge to maintain them nor the time or staffing required to properly educate riders on where to go and how to behave. Most don’t even have adequate helmets,” he said.
Wampler said the e-bike market is getting more saturated every year and more manufacturers are making less-expensive models, making it possible for visitors to buy a relatively cheap e-bike online for their summer stay in Aspen.
In 2022, Pitkin County commissioners approved a voluntary program that asked commercial e-bike rental shops to install radio-frequency-identification-chipped stickers on their fleets to track e-bike traffic. Fleet owners participating in the program required their customers to watch the video “How to E-Bike in Aspen” and read the flyer “Biking the Bells” before renting an e-bike. The video and flyer explain the rules of the road and how to safely e-bike in Aspen and to the Bells, such as riding in a single file or wearing a helmet.
Wampler said the video is still on Aspen Velo’s website and staffers still encourage renters to watch it, but he feels it’s more effective to communicate to his clientele face to face. “We can engage and actually tell if they are retaining anything once we send them for a test lap. If not, then we can go back and single out those who need a little ‘extra’ education,” he said.
The Aspen Police Department launched an e-bike educational and enforcement campaign in the summer of 2024. Last summer, the department expanded its e-bike education and enforcement work into “a more coordinated, citywide approach” with the city’s Street Smart program. A Dec. 16 APD memo reporting on the program for Aspen City Council shows that total traffic collisions from January through October in Aspen have declined by nearly 24% over four years, but pedestrian and bike crashes have remained relatively stable and accounted for 3% of all 2025 traffic collisions. About 69% of these pedestrian and bicycle collisions from 2022 to 2025 resulted in injuries.
APD Administrative Supervisor Brittany Janes told Aspen Journalism that the number of bicycle and e-bike contacts increased in 2025 by more than 50% over 2024, and officers nearly doubled patrol hours dedicated to bike and pedestrian safety. “The majority of contacts were educational, with officers taking time to explain safety expectations and local laws,” according to Janes.
APD upgraded its tracking tools, deployed new sensors for trail-speed enforcement, and collaborated with the city’s parks and engineering departments on the trail system and messaging through the Street Smart campaign, which included participation from bike-rental shops, WE-Cycle and the Aspen Chamber Resort Association. APD noted that the parks department conducted 17 outreach pop-up events, updated signage and worked closely with bike-rental shops. Wampler said he shares a few key takeaways from the campaign to his customers. “The bikeways in town appear to be gaining traction. It’s nice people finally seem to be catching on, both drivers and cyclists,” he said.
“We did see increased awareness from riders, especially on the trails, but risky behaviors like riding on the pedestrian mall, rolling stop signs and speeding on shared-use paths are still common,” Janes said. “High-performance e-bikes remain a challenge to safely intercept with pedal-assist APD patrol bikes, and rider speeds on shared-use paths continue to be a concern. We’re exploring additional tools for next season.”
Aspen Journalism is supported by a grant from the Pitkin County Healthy Community Fund.