Glacier says it will have shuttle in 2020

While the future of the free shuttle in Glacier National Park remains somewhat in flux, the Park Service program won’t go into next season penniless.

The Park had been contracting out the operation and maintenance of its shuttle fleet to Flathead County at a cost of about $800,000 a year. The county opted out of that deal last week (see related story).

The Park has accumulated a little more than $1 million for shuttle operations next year, spokeswoman Gina Kerzman told the Hungry Horse News.

Glacier sets aside $10 of every $35 weekly entrance fee toward the transit program. The way the accounting is set up, this year’s fees go toward next year’s program.

The $10 amounts to about 28% of the weekly fee. However, only about 7% of the 3 million visitors that turned the gates last year actually used the shuttle in 2019, Kerzman noted.

Now the Park says it will do its own internal audit to see if that’s actually what it costs to operate and maintain the service.

“We have to do our own internal analysis to determine if those numbers jive,” she said.

The Park’s fleet of Dodge Sprinter buses may be old — some are more than 10 years old — but they don’t have that many miles. The average is just under 130,000 miles, which isn’t a lot for a diesel engine.

Kerzman said Glacier is working closely with the regional Park Service office on a plan for next summer. There’s several different options. One option would be to have the system operated as a concession contract.

Glacier already does that with its red bus fleet. The 33 red buses are operated and maintained under contract with Xanterra, who even built its own state-of-the-art, climate-controlled shop to house the reds.

But a ride in a red bus isn’t free. A red bus ride from the Apgar Visitor Center up and over the Going-to-the-Sun Road to Many Glacier and back again is $100, sans lunch. A ride to Logan Pass from the visitor center is $64.

But those are interpretative tours and aren’t meant to be a shuttle. Xanterra runs hiker shuttles in the summer as well back and forth from popular trailheads outside the Sun Road corridor.

The Xanterra shuttle from Many Glacier to St. Mary costs a far more modest $10 for an adult and children are less.

Another option the Park is considering is going to vans, Kerzman noted. A bus driver needs a commercial driver’s license to operate a bus, but a driver doesn’t need a CDL to operate a van. Paying and finding bus drivers with CDLs has proven challenging, particularly since a shuttle bus driver only makes about $15 an hour.

There’s also problems with the way the shuttle has been operated in the past. Popular trails like the Highline Trail are seeing overcrowding, which is due primarily to the shuttle dropping off busloads of people at Logan Pass every day during the summer.

A 2017 study found that approximately 30,000 people hiked the Highline Trail in July alone. That’s about 1,000 a day, give or take.

Many of those folks make the hike all the way to Granite Park chalet, which only has two toilets. They aren’t composting toilets either — the waste has to be hauled out by helicopter, stored in 55 gallon drums.

But having said that, Kerzman said the Park Service should have a transit plan sooner, rather than later — within a few weeks.

“Our intention is to provide a transit system,” she said.