With no more tractor trailers in village core, Vail aims to eliminate garbage trucks next
Town attempts to get ahead of big construction project coming to Bridge Street
John LaConte/Vail Daily
Vail Police Chief Ryan Kenney assuaged concerns from Vail business owners and the Town Council on Tuesday regarding his department’s latest efforts to remove large vehicles from the village core in the name of safety.
The town began taking steps in 2020 to limit vehicle traffic in pedestrian areas of Lionshead and the village, banning tractor-trailers and implementing an e-delivery system in which a courier service uses small, golf-cart-like vehicles to bring deliveries to businesses on Bridge Street and other areas in the Vail Village core.
A new plan to disallow garbage trucks on Bridge Street — approved on first reading Tuesday — is the latest iteration of that effort, Kenney said, a first step toward a goal of eventually seeing electric vehicles transporting trash to outlying points of the village.
“Yes, this is the first step, but we’re going to be very cautious about how we do it,” Kenney said. “We’re gonna go slow and we’re going to work with the trash companies.”
Kenney said trash collection will be rerouted to nearby access points at the intersection of Bridge Street and Gore Creek Drive or at the top of Hanson Ranch Road, and the trash hauling companies will take on the extra work of getting the trash to those locations.
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Business owners expressed concerns that rerouting collection points would create additional work for them, but Kenney assured them that this would not be the case.
“There will be no effect to the customer,” Kenney said. “No cost increase and no difference in service.”
Major construction coming to Bridge Street
Kenney said the Vail Police Department has talked to trash company owners as well as the workers doing the pickups, saying all three trash companies that operate in Vail are supportive of the effort, especially given the new construction set to happen over the next few years with the incipient remodel of the Red Lion building, located at the corner of Bridge Street and Hanson Ranch Road.
“Having trash trucks going up there isn’t going to be great during that time,” Kenney said. “The companies don’t want to do it. They want a solution to that.”
On April 7, Amelia Kovacs with Apex Waste told the council that the company supports the measure.
“The other haulers also see this as an opportunity to right-size many of these customers so there isn’t trash or recycling flowing into the streets,” Kovacs said. “We’re excited to collaborate on this. If this is a safety topic that the chief wants to prioritize, and that our residents want to prioritize, this is something we want to be part of, too.”
In voting in favor of the effort, Council Member Sam Biszantz — herself a Vail Village business owner — called the effort a test.
“It seems that you have satisfied most of the public’s concerns,” Biszantz said. “So I’m OK to test this out and see how it goes.”
Tough job
Kenney said the new Bridge Street trash removal operation will show the police department how well the town can retrofit waste solutions into existing infrastructure.
“This will be a good indicator of whether this works, and whether we can continue to build on it,” he said.
The town of Vail’s effort to remove large trucks from the village core has not come easy thus far. A first attempt to ban tractor-trailers from making deliveries in pedestrian areas resulted in a lawsuit from the Colorado Motor Carriers Association in 2023. The lawsuit initially led a federal court to block the town’s ban on high-volume commercial carriers, but the town ultimately prevailed in a 2025 appeals court ruling.
Meanwhile, a 2025 effort to pursue a municipal waste collection system proved to be one of the most contentious ideas the town has seen in recent years. At standing-room-only meetings, dozens of commenters spoke out against the idea, calling it un-American and accusing the Vail Town Council of government overreach.
Council Member Reid Phillips, on Tuesday, referenced that effort while voting in favor of removing trash trucks from Bridge Street.
“This is a lot better than what we did previously when we were trying to get to a single trash vendor situation,” Phillips said.
