While the general park-going public ruminates on Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's proposal to boost entrance fees at 17 national parks to as much as $70 per week, no doubt commercial tour operations are chewing on the increased rates the secretary is proposing for them. Depending on time of year, those rates could be as high as $1,200.
According to a Park Service release, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 amended the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965 by requiring the Secretary of Interior to establish a commercial tour fee “…to be imposed on each vehicle entering (each unit of the National Park Service for which an entrance fee is charged) for the purpose of providing commercial tour services within the unit.” The NPS has not updated the commercial tour entrance fee schedule since implementation in 1998.
Beginning May 1, 2019, all parks that have a vehicle entrance rate must charge the commercial tour entrance fees based upon the most recent Commercial Vehicle Fee Schedule below. Parks that have a per
person entrance rate only will charge the per person fee.
The Park Service also is proposing to implement peak-seasonal commercial tour entrance fees at 17 national parks. The peak-season for each park is defined as its busiest contiguous five-month period of visitation. The proposed fee structure is to be implemented in Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Denali, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Olympic, Sequoia & Kings Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Zion national parks with peak season starting on May 1, 2019; in Acadia, Mount Rainier, Rocky Mountain, and Shenandoah national parks with peak season starting on June 1, 2019, and in Joshua Tree National Park with peak season starting on January 1, 2020. Proposed peak-season commercial tour entrance fees are below.
Eighty percent of the commercial tour entrance fees remain in the collecting park. The other 20 percent is spent on projects in other national parks. The Park Service would expend the funds on projects and activities that further the mission and purpose of the National Park Service, with an emphasis on deferred maintenance.
Comments
This is long overdue.
Hopefully, the next change will be to join the rest of the world and set higher entrance fees for non-residents.
This is the second shoe to drop (of what is likely to be at least 3 or 4).
The discussion thread for the premium pricing for 17 parks had multiple comments about increasing the pricing for foreign visitors and for large tour busses; here that is.
Note that the commercial tour fees are per park, so a summer tour for Zion, Bryce, & Grand Canyon in any season, in a 60 person bus, would be $60 per visitor: $20 per visitor per park. That's less than the proposed $30 per person peak season rate for public transportation & walk in visitors to the 17 parks. The $600 fee off season or other group 4 parks is $10 per visitor, again 2/3 of the $15 off season group 4 per person rate. Does that fee seem reasonable or not? [I'd like to drop the per person no-vehicle fees across the board to encourage public transportation to parks (including Al's trains!) ,because in my estimation half of the visitor impact & congeston is vehicles, but that's a different argument.]
Based on that 2015 IG report as well as the peak pricing approaching the $80 annual pass, I suspect the interagency annual pass will soon go up from $80. I don't know if it will go to $100, $150, or even higher. [If it does, look for some exemption to allow hunting on National Forests without a pass or day use fee.]
They may or may not address the IG's complaint that so many annual passes are discounted. I don't see Zinke approving eliminating the free passes for military families, and probably not for permanently disabled folks either. That leaves 4th graders' "Every Kid in a Park" passes, which didn't exist when the IG wrote the report. I hope those are continued, as they are tying future generations to their parks, as well as making it free & easy for casual family day trips to the local park or National Forest. I don't think very many of those 4th grade passes are "lost revenue"; they're free samples to get more revenue & support in the future.
Let's go to the numbers:
Fee Increase Additional Revenue per year
Sr Pass $10 to $80 $35M ($70*500K)
Fees to full tier $28M (from IG report)
Peak Season Fees $70M projected in proposal
Commercial tour fees $66M - $100M *see below
doubling annual pass** $20M (based on 2012 revenue of $20M to NPS @$80 passes)
Total $200M - $250M depending on annual pass & tour numbers
*: low estimate is $17M/yr current revenue @$300*3, high estimate is ~100K large commercial tour busses * $900 increase each, plus $10M smaller busses
**: not proposed, but possible, and for comparative purposes
The administration's budget proposed ~$400M/yr cut from the NPS appropriations, so this is still going backward. Also, leave the road maintenence for other funding; $200M/yr still takes decades to cover $4-5B non-road maintenence backlog if other funds are sufficient to prevent deferred maintenence from 2017 on (which they aren't).
I apologize that my link to the DOI IG report is now broken. You can try:
https://www.doioig.gov/reports/review-national-park-services-recreation-...
which has a tiny link to the pdf:
https://www.doioig.gov/sites/doioig.gov/files/CINNPS00122013Public.pdf
which is exactly the link in the previous post. Annoying that direct links to the pdf appear to be blocked...
ps: One more number for comparison. The NPS top bean-counters estimate that it would require an additional $700M/yr funding to prevent the deferred maintenence backlog from increasing.
http://www.gao.gov/assets/690/681581.pdf (page 1 quotes Jarvis Congressional testimony re: the $700M figure).
Again, take that number for what you will, and at least divide it by half to distinguish roads & bridges that come out of transportation funding, but $200M-$250M of fees doesn't stop the bleeding, even if appropriated funds stay flat instead of decreasing by $400M.
What is entrance group 1,2,3,4 above referring to?
Helen--
Parks are divided into 4 tiers based on size, average visitor duration, etc. Yosemite, Yellowstone, Olympic, Grand Canyon, Zion, etc. are the group 4 parks (known as tier 1 in some documents: tiers and groups are numbered in opposite directions). I've never seen a full list of all parks in each group, although according to the 2015 IG audit at that time there were only 10 group 4 parks: the above 5 plus Bryce Canyon, Glacier, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, and Sequoia/Kings Canyon. In 2006 "model" or default entrance fees were set for each tier (see page 50 in https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/migrated/ppa/upload/FLREA_Trienn... ). But then the recession came, so fees did not immediately go up, then they didn't go up post-recession because most park superintendents didn't want to raise them. The 2015 IG audit report https://www.doioig.gov/sites/doioig.gov/files/CINNPS00122013Public.pdf forced NPS to stop the moritorium on fee increases and raise fees to the target to "standardize fees across parks". Rather than top level NPS folks taking the heat, each individual park had to do the public notification and planning process, including getting public comment. Some superintendents didn't want to raise the entrance fees, some did. In a few cases public comments provided sufficient ammunition for superintendents to justify not raising entrance fees, in more cases the lack of pushback from the public gave the parks no justification to not raise the fees. I haven't heard of any cases where a superintendent wanted to raise the fees but was prevented by public comments. In that middle category, many parks didn't jump from $5 to $15 in one step, but did an initial increase to $10 for a year, gauged public comments and changes in visitation numbers, did a second round of formal public comment, then made the second bump to their tier's standard fee level.