Park officials explain Sun Road impacts and plans

Last week, Glacier National Park unveiled five preliminary alternatives for a long-term management plan along the 50-mile scenic route, along with the pullouts, trails and other infrastructure connected to Going-to-the-Sun Road.

Each alternative proposes steps the Park could undertake to reduce visitor impacts on the Sun Road, which averages 1,900 vehicles per day at Logan Pass during the peak season.

Park officials say they’re still in the first stages of the process, which initiated in 2013 with a public scoping process.

Using data from public comments, visitation statistics, socio-economic and transportation studies and surveys conducted by the University of Montana, Park officials came up with five general strategies for managing a limited resource facing increasing demand.

Mary Riddle, Glacier Park’s chief of planning, said the preliminary alternatives will be further developed through public participation in the process.

“We’ll be finding out, are these alternatives broad enough, or did we leave something out?” she said.

Riddle explained that the first four options are relatively standard for the planning process that eventually will result in more specific management proposals, a draft environmental impact statement and the selection of a preferred alternative this fall.

They include a “no action” alternative; increasing parking and holding the shuttle system at the status quo; increasing shuttles, restricting vehicles and encouraging bike use; and scrapping the shuttle system, heavily restricting vehicles and encouraging bike use.

The fifth alternative addresses a range of possible scenarios and allows for different management responses to the many variables driving visitor impacts. Different thresholds, such as total visitation or the number of cars circling the Logan Pass parking lot at a given time, would trigger different management actions.

Those actions would be developed with public input as the Sun Road corridor plan would evolve over the next two years. Visitors would know what to expect, and the triggers would be based on trends spanning at least several years, rather than short-term reactions to annual changes in visitation and use.

“We feel like it hedges our bets to be more nimble and more responsive,” Park deputy superintendent Kym Hall said.

The other alternatives are more heavy-handed and less responsive to changes over time, Hall said, but the public may not see it the same way during the ongoing public comment period.

“Giving the government more of a range to move in isn’t going to sit as well with everyone,” Hall said.

Hall and Riddle said preparing for a range of possible scenarios has benefits, as changes in technology, the economy and the climate and their effects on visitor behavior are hard to predict.

Less expendable income could reduce visitation, or future ride-sharing opportunities, as seen with the popular Uber service, could reshape the need for increased parking spots. Climate change might expand the Park’s peak season or discourage some visitor uses as meltwater-dependent streams and rivers dry up earlier.

The “adaptive response” alternative aims to give managers more leeway given those unknowns, and is divided into three sub-alternatives that assume different changes in visitation levels over time.

The first assumes a dramatic increase in visitation in the range of 2.6 million to 2.8 million visitors in a year (last year Glacier Park set a record with 2.3 million visitors) and allows for responses including permit requirements for hikers, restricting vehicle access and increasing paved parking areas.

Under the second scenario, in which Park visitation sees a more modest increase to about 2.4 million per year or less, the response would happen at a slower pace. The focus would be on lighter infrastructure management, such as widening and hardening the Park’s most popular trails. If visitation stays flat or decreases, Park officials would likewise have the latitude to potentially loosen existing restrictions.

Funding is an issue for all the alternatives. Like many federal agencies, the National Park Service has seen funding tighten over recent years, and Glacier Park already has a $178 million maintenance backlog.

“That’s one thing we’ll analyze in the EIS, and there’s a lot of reluctance to create management alternatives that require adding new staff,” Hall said.

Tradeoffs are possible, and defunding parts of the Park budget could allow for new projects or programs elsewhere. Another possibility includes charging for the currently free shuttle, but Hall said surveys indicate shuttle use would drop significantly if that happened.

One of the main money-saving threads running through each of the alternatives is a focus on partnerships with gateway communities near Glacier Park. For example, Riddle suggested, a partnership with Hungry Horse or another nearby town could allow a private organization to provide connector shuttles into the Park, cutting down on the need for added parking in Glacier Park and loosening congestion.

The public has shown little appetite for significant changes to the Park’s look. During the public scoping period, a top comment was satisfaction with how little the Park has changed over time, even among those who had been visiting Glacier Park since the 1940s.

“That says a lot, that’s really what our organization is all about,” Hall said. “So how do you keep doing that when those (visitation) numbers keep jumping up every year?”

While some national parks have determined a “carrying capacity” or upper limit for their main visitor corridors, arriving at that number isn’t so simple in Glacier Park. The West Entrance receives significantly more traffic than the Park’s other entrances, and the distribution of visitors along the two-way road tends to be more lopsided.

But encouraging more people to seek out Glacier Park’s more isolated corners could impact the experience for those seeking solitude off the beaten path.

“We’ve really gone back and forth on, ‘Do you really want to displace people out to other areas of the park?’” Hall said. “Does it self-select? Do you want people to say, ‘Well, I just know I don’t want to go there.’”

Possible strategies to maintain a range of visitor experiences include encouraging even more use of already-popular trails and accommodating the increased use by widening, paving or fortifying them with gravel. The Sun Road corridor averages 4,100 hikers per day during the peak season.

Ultimately, it will be up to the public to shape the management strategies as the process moves forward and to determine where the lines are drawn between accessibility and natural integrity.

“We’re trying to preserve that, yet make everyone feel welcome,” Hall said. “It’s really walking on a sword’s edge.”

The public comment period for the preliminary alternatives ends June 5. To view the preliminary alternatives or to submit comments, visit online at https://parkplanning.nps.gov/glac.