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Zion National Park Considering Reservation System To Manage Crowds

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Zion National Park officials are considering a move to require visitors to have reservations to enter the park/Kurt Repanshek

In a move that could signal the future of your national park vacation, Zion National Park officials are thinking of moving to a reservation system for entry into the iconic red rock cathedral to protect resources and ensure the enjoyment of visitors.

It's an idea being considered more and more in recent years by superintendents as record-breaking crowds strain places like Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Zion, and many other parks. There likely will be pushback to Zion's proposals. But park staff, budgets, the tight confines of 6-mile-long Zion Canyon, and today's growing crowds cast a reservation system as perhaps the best way to help superintendents meet the National Park Service Organic Act's overriding directive: 

... to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." 

"On Memorial Day Sunday, we had 30,300 people in the park that day," John Marciano, the park's public affairs spokesman, said Saturday. "That's nuts. No one has a good time."

More and more times during the year, the Virgin River in the Zion Narrows is overcrowded/NPS

To provide visitors with a better experience in the park, and to better protect natural resources, Zion officials are seeking public comment through August 14 on three proposals:

  • Alternative A: Make no changes from the current visitor management system.
  • Alternative B: Require all visitors to obtain a reservation for their stay. With this reservation, they would be allowed to go to any of the park's frontcountry areas, places such as Zion Narrows, Angels Landing, and Observation Point.
  • Alternative C: In addition to needing a reservation to enter the park, you'd need specific reservations if you wanted to enter Zion Narrows or hike to the top of Angels Landing. Day hikers heading into wilderness areas also would need to obtain permits.

A reservation system, if implemented, would apply to all areas of the park, from Zion Canyon and Checkerboard Mesa to the Kolob Canyon corner of the park.

Driving the process is overcrowding to the point where it can jeopordize safety and damage the park's natural resources. While there are roughly 13 miles of official trails in Zion Canyon, officials say there are more than 30 miles of visitor-created unofficial trails there.

"The longer we wait, the worse the condition of the resource gets," said Mr. Marciano.

Visitation to Zion has gone up 60 percent over the past decade, to more than 4.3 million a year. While the park years ago moved to requiring visitors to ride shuttle buses into the famous canyon unless they had lodging reservations, the shuttle system has bogged down with increasing demand.

"Visitors are experiencing long lines for basic services," said the park's newsletter that announced the reservation proposals. "The shuttles are routinely over capacity, with buses that have a capacity of 68 seated riders commonly being filled with between 95 and 100 people.

"Vehicular traffic is often backing up along roadways into Springdale, causing traffic congestion problems there," the newsletter went on. "Trails, campgrounds, and other infrastructure are seeing wear and tear more quickly and faster than funding allows for repairs."

Visitor safety also is at risk, as the number of emergency response calls for rangers "has increased exponentially, and emergency response can be delayed because of traffic congestion," said park officials.

Alternative C would also improve traffic flow from the South Entrance along the Zion-Mount Carmel Highway to the East Entrance by prohibiting oversized vehicles -- large RVs, tour buses, motor homes, and travel trailers -- from traveling that route. Alternative B would restrict those oversized vehicles to specific time windows in mornings and evenings.

Alternative B and C also would move the South Campground to a reservation system; it currently operates on a first-come, first-served basis.

Discarded from consideration in the effort to better manage crowds and protect resources was congestion pricing, also known as surge pricing.

"National park units are a public resource, and to the extent possible, should remain affordable to visitors across a range of financial status," the park newsletter said. "Congestion pricing could place unfair financial burdens on some visitors, as price points during peak vacation times would likely need to be very high to maintain visitor capacity by dissuading park visitors from entering during crowded times through paying a high rate."

In developing the proposals open for public consideration, park officials reviewed available data -- "We know how many people come into the canyon every day. We have a breakdown of big vehicles, small vehicles, people who walk in, drive through. We have that breakdown," said Mr. Marciano. "We also have (hiker) numbers for trails, Angels Landing, etc." -- and discussed the issue and possible solutions with Park Service staff in both the Intermountain Region Office in Denver and the agency headquarters in Washington, D.C.

If a final decision is made to go with a reservation system of some sort -- either Alternative B, Alternative C, or some sort of hybrid -- then Zion staff will have to settle on a daily visitor capacity.

Details of the proposal, and a page to comment, can be found at this site.

In a common scene at Zion in summer, traffic backs up from the South Entrance down into the gateway community of Springdale/Kurt Repanshek

Comments

Times have changed - there are more people visiting the parks then there used to be...  We have more and more people coming into the country every year...  The NPS budget has been greatly reduced as the Federal Government funnels budget to other programs.  Only a few parks actually pull in enough money to be self sufficient.  I don't see a short-term solution to this issue other than to restrict the number of people who are visiting at a given time.  And even that would be tough to manage on a day-to-day basis.  Takes the spontenaity out of the process... but I would rather reserve the week I'm in the park than be bumper-to-bumper driving through the park - or in a long line of people hiking on one of the trails.


Reservations?  Making more money for a corporation, and a foreign corporation at that?  "National park units are a public resource, and to the extent possible, should remain affordable to visitors across a range of financial status," the park newsletter said.   I'm retired, in the same financial poverty bracket as in early camping years.  That reservation fee - which is another step toward privatizing public facilities that I helped pay for so some corporation from my investments - is a lot of money to young families and seniors.  There is a problem - I've seen it in summers at Yosemite (and also seen the graffiti and heard the boomboxes).  I also counted tour buses going INTO Grand Canyon when I was leaving - one or more per mile from Williams to the Park.  These parks are not Disneyland, and not set up to make money for foreign corporations.  Measures that would solve this problem? 

Restrict tour buses and travel agencies from over-using the system. 

Restrict advertising or require the advertisers to include crowding warnings in their ads. 

Require all those who are day-tripping to use special public transit from Gateway communities, not cars.  (Yosemite has great success with YARTS - it's a model for what can be done.  And if YARTS brings folks in from Merced or Mammoth, sans vehicles, they will need reserved lodging or they'll need to leave that day.)  EVERY ACCESS BUS SHOULD HAVE AN NPS - NOT COOP ASSOC - INTERPRETER ON BOARD TO EXPLAIN NPS HERITAGE, VALUES, HISTORY, AND COMMON SENSE RULES. 

But do NOT make this another step towards privatization and use MY funded facilities to make swollen profits for a foreign reservation corporation


Entry quotas would work.  Before Eisner and Eiger took over Disneyland, Disney had a strongly-enforced quota for daily visitation.  It meant that the park was never suffocating with people.  There was a legal reason, too, and this should have been obvious to the NPS decades ago - simple safety.   There are clearly marked capacities in all public buildings; Disneyland worked with the local fire departments to set their capacity.  Why can't the NPS do that?  When the park is facing crisis - flood, fire, earthquake - and filled far beyond capacity, that is dangerous in the extreme.  So I would suggest (in addition to other ideas here) that each park have a set capacity, based on safety concerns and laws. 


Yes!  I never understood all this promoting.  The NPS has brought this on themselves.  Population growth is another big problem.

 


Hi Jill! International travelers have been visiting Yellowstone since the Park was created in 1872. Many other countries followed our example and created their own national parks. The National Parks are for the enjoyment of all but there must be crowd and use management so that we can actually enjoy them. Keeping foreigners out is not the answer. 


Glacier Bay limits the number of cruise ships that may enter the bay each day.  Why not the same kind of restrictions on large tour buses in other parks? 


Looks like the problem is not limited to National Parks 

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2017/07/18/mt-bierstadt-colorado-hiking-fee/

 


Zion's not alone in this, as we all know.  Here's an article from the Fresno CA Bee regarding Yosemite's crowding.

Perhaps articles like this one, that tell the truth about what's happening will have a dampening effect on visitation and may help a little.

http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/article160640879.html


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