A toll to drive the Sun Road? Perhaps, group says

A toll to drive the Sun Road? That's just one suggestion the National Parks Conservation Association has for the Glacier National Park as it analyzes the best way to control congestion on the historic highway.

"While personal vehicles should be allowed on the road, GNP should consider a fee system that reflects the real costs of driving a personal vehicle (i.e. road maintenance, enforcement overcrowding, etc.) on the Sun Road versus riding the shuttle," NPCA maintains in a recent letter to the Park Service.

NPCA, which has more than 1 million members nationwide, made that suggestion and several others in a 4 1/2 -page letter to the Park Service in its comments on a preliminary Sun Road Corridor management plan the Park released earlier this spring.

"Such a fee for private-vehicle use could help to reduce traffic and congestion on the road and in parking areas ... Charging for private vehicle access will incentivize use of shuttles, and could subsidize a vast portion of expected shuttle costs," the letter, written by Sarah Lundstrum of NPCA's Whitefish offices maintains.

NPCA did not endorse any of the five alternatives the Park recently put out to the public, which includes a host of different options - but not one that would charge more for private vehicles on the road. The Park's alternatives talked about phasing out the Park's free shuttle service, adding more parking, implementing a permit system to hike some trails, creating a reservation system and an adaptive management strategy that implements controls on traffic, depending upon the number of people at the proverbial doorstep.

NPCA doesn't want to see reduced access to the Park, or for the Park to try to spread out the crowds to other regions of Glacier.

"Pushing people to other areas of the Park - such as the North Fork, Many Glacier and Two Medicine - will not ease any of these problems within the Sun Road corridor," Lundstrum writes. "Rather, doing so will lead only to similar problems in other areas of the Park (The Sun Road will remain overcrowded, while other areas will become so as well)."

The Sun Road corridor has become increasingly crowded over the past few years. The Park has seen record visitation and on top of that, the current free shuttle service Glacier provides drops off thousands more visitors to trailheads and parking lots than they ever saw before. In the past, when their was no shuttle service, the crowds were self limited by the number of parking spaces available. Once the parking lots filled up, particularly at Logan Pass, the number of hikers on trails leveled out.

But now, with the free shuttle service, which will ramp up next month, thousands more people are being dropped off. This has caused overcrowding on several popular trails and people getting too close to wildlife. A study of mountain goats on the Hidden lake Trail, for example, showed that mountain goats living there encounter a person every few seconds.

The goats have proven to be extremely tolerant.But Park managers and many people in the general public, note that something will eventually have to give with the crowds, or the very qualities that make Glacier such an attractive place will be compromised.

To that end, NPCA does have some suggestions on how to ease the parking problem. It calls for time limits on some parking spaces in popular areas like Logan Pass and not allowing any overnight parking in the corridor.

Many people have actually called for an increase in the shuttle service. NPCA said that could be a good idea, but the Park needs to closely examine its actual ability to reduce congestion on the highway.

NPCA also tackles the problem of noise in the corridor, noting the corridor has become noisy over the past few years with increased motorcycle traffic and increased helicopter traffic.

"Acceptable decibel levels need to be established so that visitor experiences on the trails around the Sun Road are not affected," Lundstrum writes.

There should also be limits on helicopter flights, such as restricting them to the Sun Road corridor so they don't impact other regions of the Park.

The Park's general management plan, written in 1999, calls for phasing out scenic overflights altogether. That aspect of the plan was never implemented however, and helicopter traffic has gotten worse in recent years, not better. One operator now has three aircraft, where before the business had just one or two.

In short, the NPCA wants to see a stronger vision from the Park. First do no more harm, then come up with a plan that has a more thorough analysis.

"We found that all the preliminary alternatives were overly timid in their approach to dealing with these problems, assuming that the goal is to substantively address these issues in ways that actually change the visitor experience and the impacts to resources," Lundstrum writes.

Glacier is expected to release a formal draft environmental impact statement, along with more defined alternatives, by this fall.

Park spokeswoman Denise Germann noted that any fee changes would take higher Park Service approval.

"It's beyond just Glacier to approve that," she said.

All told the Park received 321 comments on the preliminary alternatives.