Glacier Officials Urge Public Comment on Sun Road Corridor Plan

Of the numerous challenges that have cropped up during the past century of human stewardship at Glacier National Park – climate change, increasing visitation, shifting land policies, fragile mountain ecosystems – management of the famed Going-to-the-Sun Road embodies them all, capturing the essence of the park’s difficult mission to delicately balance protection, preservation and access.

Since its inception, Park Service officials in Glacier have constantly dealt with the pressures of rising visitation, particularly as it increased from 200,000 people in 1946 to 600,000 in 1954.

Sixty years after that dramatic spike, Glacier Park continues to set records, with 2.3 million visitors flooding its entrances last year, marking a 6.6 percent increase over the previous year’s totals and the sixth time in eight years that visitation surpassed 2 million people.

With the growing popularity comes a significant dilemma on the iconic Sun Road, and as visitors flood the park, choking the narrow two-lane corridor with vehicles and filling the parking lots and surrounding trails, park managers are looking for a long-term solution.

To that end, they have proposed a suite of preliminary changes that could dramatically alter how visitors travel throughout Glacier.

The National Park Service on May 1 published the preliminary alternatives of the Going-to-the-Sun Corridor Management Plan. A year after collecting initial public comments about possible management strategies for the busy western corridor of the park, the agency has crafted five proposed alternatives.

The public is encouraged to comment on the alternatives until June 5.

Mary Riddle, chief of planning and environmental compliance at Glacier, emphasized that the five proposed alternatives are just that – proposals, which will evolve through the public comment process.

Riddle and other park administrators say they recognize that Glacier is a special place to visitors around the world, and any changes in management cannot be taken lightly.

“Glacier is such a special place to many people and economically it is a very important piece of Montana, so we want to be very careful and gather as much input as possible before we develop the plan further,” Riddle said. “Our intent is not to keep people out but to make sure that we protect resources and protect visitor experiences and provide experiences that people come to get at Glacier and not have frustrated visitors who are unable to park.”

One of the corridor plan’s key focuses is on the free shuttle system, which Glacier National Park launched in 2007. The shuttles provide transportation on the Going-to-the-Sun Road from the Apgar Transit Center on the west side of the park to St. Mary Visitor Center on the east side.

The shuttle system was launched with the goal of easing traffic congestion and parking problems while the Sun Road was undergoing rehabilitation.

And while the shuttles have proven popular and are heavily used, Riddle said they are not having the expected result of removing vehicles from the corridor. Instead, the shuttles have led to an increase of people on the trails along the Going-to-the-Sun corridor as more hikers are deposited at popular trailheads.

The five preliminary alternatives present a range of actions, including a no-action alternative, discontinuing the shuttle service, building additional parking and infrastructure, limiting natural resource damage from increased use on trails by widening them or installing handrails, increasing the number of shuttles and their hours of daily operation and length of season, and enforcing timed vehicle entries or a reservation system.

Under one alternative, some trails would require day hike permits during peak season, while another alternative would increase biking opportunities by developing specific bike trails and establishing days that only bikes are allowed on the Sun Road.

The final alternative “offers a flexible decision-framework for how to respond to future events, trends, risks and threats that are uncertain or unknown,” the plan states. This proposal would establish triggers that would determine when the agency should respond with an action.

“This is the most adaptive approach, in which we use a technique called scenario planning to explore possible future actions,” Riddle said.

The final alternative allows more flexibility as climate change becomes a more immediate reality, Riddle said, particularly as global warming has the potential to expand the peak visitor season.

There are several proposals that are common in all of the alternatives, including monitoring and managing noise levels and enhancing hiker and biker opportunities outside of the peak summer season.

The preliminary alternatives are described in the project’s spring newsletter available at https://parkplanning.nps.gov/glac. Comments may be submitted online or by mail to: Glacier National Park, Attn: GTSR Corridor Plan, P.O. Box 128, West Glacier, MT, 59936.

After collecting public comment, the park service will develop a draft environmental impact statement and release that plan for public comment in the fall. A record of decision could be issued in early 2017.