Page 13 - Flathead Beacon // 5.13.15

FLATHEADBEACON.COM NEWS MAY 13, 2015 | 13 Glacier Officials Urge Public Comment
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on Sun Road Corridor Plan
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Multi-year planning effort looks for solutions to overcrowding
on Glacier’s iconic thoroughfare and the park’s most popular trails
By TRISTAN SCOTT of the Beacon
Of the numerous challenges that have cropped up during the past century of human stewardship at Glacier National Park – climate change, increasing visita- tion, shifting land policies, fragile moun- tain ecosystems – management of the famed Going-to-the-Sun Road embod- ies them all, capturing the essence of the park’s difficult mission to delicately bal- ance protection, preservation and access.
Since its inception, Park Service of- ficials 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 en- trances 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 Man- agement 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 com- ment on the alternatives until June 5.
Mary Riddle, chief of planning and environmental compliance at Glacier, emphasized that the five proposed al- ternatives are just that – proposals, which will evolve through the public comment process.
Riddle and other park administra- tors 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
Cars pass the Weeping Wall on the Going-to-the-Sun Road, hours after the iconic road over Logan Pass was opened for the 2013 season. BEACON FILE PHOTO
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 focus- es 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 re- sult of removing vehicles from the corri- dor. Instead, the shuttles have led to an increase of people on the trails along the Going-to-the-Sun corridor as more hik- ers are deposited at popular trailheads.
The five preliminary alternatives present a range of actions, including a no-action alternative, discontinuing the shuttle service, building addition- al parking and infrastructure, limit- ing natural resource damage from in- creased 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 flex- ible decision-framework for how to re- spond to future events, trends, risks and threats that are uncertain or unknown,” the plan states. This proposal would es- tablish 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 sce- nario planning to explore possible fu- ture 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 sea- son.
There are several proposals that are common in all of the alternatives, in- cluding monitoring and managing noise levels and enhancing hiker and biker op- portunities outside of the peak summer season.
The preliminary alternatives are de- scribed in the project’s spring newslet- ter available at https://parkplanning. nps.gov/glac. Comments may be submit- ted online or by mail to: Glacier Nation- al Park, Attn: GTSR Corridor Plan, P.O. Box 128, West Glacier, MT, 59936.
After collecting public comment, the park service will develop a draft envi- ronmental impact statement and release that plan for public comment in the fall. A record of decision could be issued in early 2017.
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