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Suggestions offered to cut park’s congestion By JEFF TOLLEFSON Gazette Wyoming Bureau YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. – Traffic jams. Exhaust. Noise. That annoying lack of parking spaces. It’s an increasingly familiar scene in some of the country’s popular national parks. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Phillip Bimstein, mayor of Springfield, Utah, and Don Falvey, former superintendent of Zion National Park, offer their partnership as proof that alternative solutions can be found. They spoke here Friday during a conference sponsored by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition on the pressure of development on parks and other public lands. After years of mounting congestion and inadequate parking at Zion, the Park Service began looking into a shuttle system to replace traffic on the main route into that park, which borders Springfield on two sides. Rather than moving forward on its own, the agency worked with Springfield, coordinating the transit system with the needs of the town and business community. The result is a more pleasant outdoor experience in Zion and a brighter future for both the park and downtown Springfield, according to Bimstein. “The system in general gets people out of their cars,” he said. “Not only does it improve their experiences, but when they are out of their cars they are more likely to stop in and buy something.” Falvey says the system turned around a worsening situation where simply adding parking spaces could not. “You really feel like you’re in the park when you hit the Springfield boundary,” he said. GYC scheduled its conference to take advantage of this weekend’s annual meeting of the Growth Management Leadership Alliance, a national organization that focuses on issues of urban sprawl. Experts discussed growth and conservation efforts around the country. In Yellowstone, mass-transit systems have been discussed for years – including one suggestion for an elevated monorail – without result. John Varley, director of the park’s Yellowstone Center for Resources, says summer bus and shuttle systems have failed in the past, largely because of the road system that allows visitors driving their own vehicles to enter the park in one location and exit in another. Although he said the park is hoping for a “silver bullet,” Varley said traffic problems might eventually force the park to limit the number of vehicles that can enter the park, which several parks are already doing. “Limiting entry is something I think everybody sees in the future,” he said. “We have a cap on all use in this park, with the exception of day use, and there will come a time when day use also has a capacity.” But handling visitors and traffic is just one of many challenges facing national parks across the nation. The conference’s title – “Necklace or Noose?” – illustrates the conference theme: Population growth and urban development must be properly planned or growth will become a liability for an agency charged with preserving pieces of nature for future generations. Imbedded in that belief is the notion that nature operates in ecosystems, not arbitrary political boundaries. Varley told attendees of the conference that the future of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is in large part still open for discussion and long-term planning. But development has already encircled many parks, rendering ecosystem management “absolutely irrelevant.” GYC Executive Director Mike Clark said ecosystem management could be misleading, suggesting the term “people management.” He went on to suggest that people substitute “home place” for the word “ecosystem” to help them think of the environment as a healthy natural community. Marcia Argust, legislative representative of the National Parks Conservation Association, pointed out that the land available for development is finite, which means outward growth will come to a halt whether people plan or not. “We need to answer this question,” she said. “Since we can’t grow forever, where should we stop?”
Jeff Tollefson can be reached at (307) 527-7250
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