Editor's note: This updates with reaction from National Parks Conservation Association and U.S. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke moved Tuesday to find a way to boost funding to address the National Park Service's maintenance backlog, proposing to substantially increase park entrance fees during the "high season" for vacations. It's a move that seemingly would do little to address the backlog, estimated at roughly $12 billion, while hitting families with school students hardest.
“Secretary Zinke would rather take money directly out of the pockets of hardworking Americans instead of coming up with a serious budget proposal for the National Park System,” said Rep. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat. “More than doubling the vehicle entrance fee at Grand Canyon, as this proposal would do, or any other park is not a sustainable funding strategy. We should be encouraging more people to get outdoors and enjoy our great natural wonders instead of discouraging them by raising park entrance fees. Whether it’s healthcare, tax cuts, or now access to our national parks, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress just don’t seem to care about everyday American families.”
Under the fee proposal laid out in a press release, "entrance fees would be established at 17 national parks. The peak season for each park would be defined as its busiest contiguous five-month period of visitation."
During the peak season, the release explained, a seven-day-long "entrance fee would be $70 per private, non-commercial vehicle, $50 per motorcycle, and $30 per person on bike or foot. A park-specific annual pass for any of the 17 parks would be available for $75."
Parks to be affected by these rates, if approved, are "Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Denali, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Olympic, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Zion national parks with peak season starting on May 1, 2018; in Acadia, Mount Rainier, Rocky Mountain, and Shenandoah National Parks with peak season starting on June 1, 2018; and in Joshua Tree National Park as soon as practicable in 2018."
“We should not increase fees to such a degree as to make these places – protected for all Americans to experience – unaffordable for some families to visit," said Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association. "The solution to our parks’ repair needs cannot and should not be largely shouldered by its visitors.
“The administration just proposed a major cut to the National Park Service budget even as parks struggle with billions of dollars in needed repairs," she added. "If the administration wants to support national parks, it needs to walk the walk and work with Congress to address the maintenance backlog."
If implemented, Interior officials said, the higher fees could be expected to raise $70 million a year. Eighty percent of the revenues raised would remain in the parks where they are collected, with the remainder to be distributed elsewhere in the National Park System.
Not mentioned in the release was how the proposed entrance fees were calculated, or how significant of an impact the additional revenues would have on the maintenance backlog.
“I think the proposal speaks for itself. I don’t think we’re going to speculate on what is a good amount of money, or what is enough," said Park Service spokesman Jeff Olson.
Public comment on the proposal will be open from October 24 to November 23. You can find details on the proposal and leave your comments at this site.
The proposal comes in the wake of the Trump administration's desire to cut the National Park Service budget by roughly $400 million and its staff by about 1,200. It also comes as Interior is raising hundreds of millions of dollars from off-shore oil and gas lease auctions, a source of revenues Mr. Zinke earlier this year said could be used to address the park system's maintenance woes.
But the Interior secretary almost from the start of his tenure at Interior has said entrance fees need to be adjusted upward.
"About half the parks don't charge. Which is interesting," he said during a media call in May. "We have a tier system (for entrance fees). A number of parks chose not even to follow the tier system. So, we're concentrating on where are revenues, and shore it up."
The tiered approach to fees, if enacted, likely would hit hardest families whose vacations are governed largely by school schedules, as school vacations typically coincide with the high seasons outlined by the release.
This past summer senior citizens, not the appropriations system, were looked to by Congress to raise more money for the Park Service. On August 27 the price for a lifetime senior pass to the parks, which had been just $10 for years, jumped to $80. Park Service officials could not say Tuesday how much revenues were generated by that increase.
Yet to come is a proposal to adjust entrance and permit fees for commercial tour operators. "The proposal would increase entrance fees for commercial operators and standardize commercial use authorization (CUA) requirements for road-based commercial tours, including application and management fees," the Park Service release said. "All CUA fees stay within the collecting park and would fund rehabilitation projects for buildings, facilities, parking lots, roads, and wayside exhibits that would enhance the visitor experience. The fees will also cover the administrative costs of receiving, reviewing, and processing CUA applications and required reports."
Unlike entrance fees for park visitors, any proposed increases in CUAs would take effect following an 18-month implementation window, the Park Service said.
Comments
Toxie the fact you don't understand the difference between the economic models of a casino and that of wall street and real estate explains alot about your comments here.
For Argalite, Discriminate against the poor? How many of the true "poor" visit the subject parks today? I am willing to bet it is a tiny fraction. In the scheme of a family vaction to one of these parks, an incremental $40 is nothing and hardly in Toxie's words "a disaster for "casual" and young tourists."
Folks have been complaining about parks being overrun by visitors in the summer. That should alleviate the issue.
I would just like to encourage all who read here remember the scorn that the affluent and demonstrably selfish of the Trump supporters here and vote in the mid-terms. Don't bother arguing with them here when they troll, as they are highly resistent to anything but their own "alternative facts".
In response to CJ:
My understanding of the current NPS interpretation of the law is that the only "direct operating costs" allowed are under E for building and staffing entrance stations to collect the fees. You can't spend to clean bathrooms & empty trash cans under any of those; A - D are the direct benefit to visitors, E&F are costs of collection. The current NPS policy on top of that law is that at least 55% must be spent on things that qualify under 3A of the law that are _also_ counted in the maintenence backlog.
For the broader discussion:
As background for the fee increases, here's the DOI IG "Final Audit Report Review of National Park Service's Recreation Fee Program" report from 2015:
https://www.doioig.gov/sites/doioig.gov/files/CINNPS00122013Public.pdf
"We found several areas in which NPS is missing opportunities to maximize its fee revenue"
Look at the "figure 3" table on page 12 for America the Beautiful Passes. 500K senior passes vs 263K paid annual passes in 2012, long before the "beat the increase" rush: I would have bet against that. That might explain why the first congressionally-mandated increase was the lifetime Senior pass to $80. Page 13 seems to state that NPS has the authority to raise the cost of the $80 interagency annual pass. If Yellowstone & Yosemite go to $70, I expect the interagency annual pass to go up substantially unless there was something in the FLRA reauthorization legislation. [In a cynical moment I can think of free admission with your hunting or fishing license. And the IG wants new fee structure for commercial tours.
Here's a 2015 GAO report: https://www.gao.gov/assets/680/674187.pdf
So far we've thought about setting fees to maximize or at least increase revenue, and about how setting high fees affects the socioeconomic mix of the visitors, pricing non-rich out of parks, at least at peak times.
A slightly different way to think about the entrance fee schedule: it shapes the kinds of _visits_ parks receive as well as who the visitors are. In (almost?) all parks with entrance fees, the fee is good for a full week. For Yellowstone, Glacier, Denali, and most large natural resource parks, that makes sense in (slightly) encouraging extended rather than rushed visits. Not so much for Tuzigoot or Cabrillo that close at 5pm, and have smaller sets of features of interest.
Yes, $70 for a week at Yellowstone or Rocky Mountain NP is still a bargain. But how many visitors spend a full week there? I don't have average visit durations for those parks (not sure if such information is even available), but I suspect the majority of visits are 1-2 days, especially for Rocky Mountain NP. $70 for a day is a bit steep.
The same tradeoff happens at a group 1 (tier IV) park like Cabrillo National Monument, just at a different scale. When the entrance fee was $5 per car, good for a week, the median and average visit duration was under an hour. Lots of folks brought out of town visitors out to the park for the view, and maybe looked in the visitor center or the lighthouse. The target fee for tier 1 is $15 per car. That's going to reduce the quick visits less than an hour to see the view, but not do much to the 2-6 hour visits where folks might hike the trails and visit the bunkers as well as the lighthouse (no camping & park is only open 9-5). The interim fee of $10 per car has only slightly affected numbers of visitors, so revenue is up substantially. The mandated $15 is more likely to decrease visitation, but still increase net revenue.
Should the park keep the fee low to promote larger numbers of visitors coming out for the view, then maybe coming back later to see the rest of the park's features they didn't know existed? Or should the park go ahead and raise the fee and promote slightly fewer but longer, higher-quality visits taking in more of what the park has to offer? Cabrillo can be quite crowded on weekends & holidays, and draws around 1 million visitors per year. I don't have an answer for those questions, but I think they should be part of the consideration at least as much as maximizing revenue.
Please, no fee increases for US citizens. Raise the fees for foreign visitors to make up the needed funds. Please, no discounts for any tour buses either. The Parks are for the enjoyment of the American People and not for foreigners who pay no income taxes and enjoy our Parks while making the Parks overcrowded for the American People.
My husband and I , from NH, just returned from 2weeks traveling through Utah. One week in a condo in Brian Head and one week camping at BLM sites (we had our minimal impact camping gear in carry on backpacks).
Enjoyed the trip, but Zion was a Zoo, wouldn't go back. I told my husband it was like Disney, then tonight listening to the NPR discussions of parks and the many points made, one of them exactly "Disneyfication"
Some of the points made that impressed me:
1. Getting more Americans to come into the park. - i don't know where they're going to put them. Zion, it was said 4 million\ per year visiting -now-calculate that a day. No matter how much $you give end-to-end there is only so much space! Who wants to share that???it was said that poorer Americans should be visiting. My parents weren't able to visit most of these parks and I wasn't able to visit til I retired, guess that's how "bucket lists" evolved. Most families, I feel who are limited to travel time and money aren't going to be able to plan cross country traveling. Traveling to areas close to home yes. It's not just about National parks but national forest and BLM sites, state parks etc. The bigger places are sometimes not as interesting and accessible as the state parks.
2. Next point , "Millenials" it was said, don't feel that the parks hold relevance to them? Guess that's why there has to be cell phone service to keep them interested?
3. Parks are 12 billion behind in maintenance work. This is a sum that has been adding up for a lot of years-a lot of administrations.
Will increase in fees this year help, maybe over a lot of administrations. It was mentioned that getting possible funding from private sources such as GE, could improve some infrastructure. Sad, to think that maybe you'd see "brought to you by......" , but NPR is supported by funding!
4. my husband and I had several observations - there is limited space in these parks, resources and growing number of people traveling. I think the growth is retirees (baby boomers are everywhere,and usually with campers and their toys) a lot of foreigners this time of year. No matter how much money you can't make the parks bigger without impacting surrounding towns, parking etc. It looks to us like traveling in winter and in lesser known areas is key.
tomp2, interesting post. as I am still occasionally employed on an emergency basis as a PIO in the park, I understand some of the visitation figures for Yosemite, not all, and am not sure how much, on a daily basis, are vsitors from other nations, but it is sizeable. in any case, day use accounts for roughly 80% of park visitation. Average length of stay is 2 to 3 hours. Yosemite is a World Heritage site, popular both in America and World wide, As overhight accomodations and campgrounds are difficult to get, many visitors stay outside the park in the gateway comunities. Parking in Yosemite Valley, Galcier Point and Tuolumne Meadows is almost impossible to find on 70 to a 100 days during peak visitor season. It is a situation that is both frustrating to visistors and employees. The parks infrastructure is on overload, it simply cannot handle current visitation levels. Solutions vary including raising fees during peak periods, many think it should be a 100 dollars a day (this suggested by a former CEO of a concessionaire), rasing fees is on the table. Others feel a "little" congestion is no big deal. A tough call for the NPS, but my own opinion is that a reservation system is the best approach. As Doctor Runte has pointed out, we pay a price for population growth, we must either set some limints (I do not think pricing people out is the answer, could go on and on about this option), or we must build to accomodate and there is no end in sight with that alternative. By the way, we now have roundabouts in Yosemite Valley.
I'm glad I had the chance to work and live in a few of these iconic national parks (1966-71) before the crowds hit big time. A fee of $70 per car per week seems rather steep. But, I'm glad I now live in East TN where not a single NPS unit has an entrance fee (via their enabling legislation). However, if entrance stations were to be constructed and staffed, and if a similar fee were to be charged per car for the Great Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge Parkway, I can only imagine the outrage that would occur. In the best of all worlds, Congress should support park operations at all locations.
Does the entrance fee impact park visitation? You bet it does! Just compare the annual visitation of Shenandoah (where there are entrance fees) to the Blue Ridge Parkway (where there are no entrance fees). Yet, look at the close proximity of Shandoah to the greater Washington, DC region.
In terms of peak season overcrowding: I see only three solutions (1) higher entrance fees (which most certainly will impact visits, especially visits by families on a travel budget), (2) implementation of a reservation system, or (3) produce lots of negative publicity about the impacts of overcrowding, crime in the parks, etc. I prefer the second alternative, and thus, I totally agree with Ron Mackie. The third option, negative publicity, will ultimately impact the overall perception of the importance of parks by the public, and will likely translate into less rather than more Congressional support.