Aniyah Buell is afraid of heights. That has posed a problem for the Harrison High School senior, who on her occasional morning walk to class would have to pass over the outdated Circle Drive bridges from her life-long home just a short distance up the road.

“The fact that there wasn’t a sidewalk and the edge of the bridge wasn’t very protective, it was kind of scary,” she said.

Pinned to a short edge overlooking Fountain Creek on the long overpass, Buell would stay as far away from oncoming traffic as she could in the narrow pedestrian zone.

“It was not safe to travel without a car, and it was not safe to drive by them,” said Harrison School District 2 Superintendent Wendy Birhanzel, who added that multiple students lived close enough to walk but were unsafe crossing the bridge to school.

The danger compounded when the westbound and eastbound bridges went under construction at the end of 2023, making any pedestrian crossing even more unappealing.

Buell would more often drive, but even then she described the short commute as so “hectic” she would often put in an earbud on the side of passing traffic. The turn lane for Harrison High School is currently used as a temporary eastbound lane.

Starting at the end of November, students like Buell will hopefully have a safer option for accessing their school. Buell was performing with part of her school’s band Thursday, marching up and down the new bridge in a celebration of the project’s progress — attended by Mayor Yemi Mobolade and councilwoman Yolanda Avila.

The bridges are a major southeast Colorado Springs artery spanning hundreds of feet between Janitell and Monterey roads, just east of Interstate 25.

The bridges span over Fountain Creek, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Union Pacific railroads, the Fountain Mutual Irrigation Company, Las Vegas Street and Hancock Expressway. The popular Pikes Peak Greenway Trail also crosses under the bridges and remains closed with detours for the duration of the project.

The new eastbound bridge is set to open to traffic around Thanksgiving, replacing aging infrastructure with a new roadway and a 10-foot sidewalk for pedestrians and bicycles. Two more phases of the $40 million project constructing and shifting traffic to a new westbound bridge are set to be completed by the end of 2025.

The bridges were “falling apart,” according to Birhanzel, when they came up on the list of capital projects to address using the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority’s 1-cent sales tax for regional roadwork.

Ryan Phipps, senior engineer and project manager, said the city put off a full replacement with maintenance repairs but could not continue to do so much longer. The steel bridges were constructed with a 50-year service life.

“We’ve been actively maintaining and working towards this replacement for the last 10 to 15 years,” Phipps said.

The city reached out the community for input on the projects, including from Harrison High School students and families.

“The primary feedback was, we want a safe way to cross,” he said, referring to pedestrian traffic.

Joyce Salazar, the community outreach coordinator for RISE Southeast, a community initiative, said that the bridge was indicative of renewed investment in the overlooked southeast section of the city.

“It’s been several years in the making,” she said.

Phipps said that the city will soon be shifting attention to the Fillmore Street bridges east of Interstate 25. The project, currently in its planning phase, will be in discussion at an open house scheduled 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Best Western Plus Executive Residency Fillmore Inn.