Zion National Park: Enhancing Visitor Experience Through Improved Transportation

In the year 2000 Zion National Park introduced the Zion Canyon Shuttle to transport visitors into Zion Canyon while alleviating traffic congestion and improving visitor experience. Now in its 14th season of operation, the Shuttle is successfully accomplishing those goals and receives kudos from Park visitors. Continued and increasing popularity of Zion National Park – now with 2.8 million visitors annually - has created new transportation challenges at the gateway to the Park. At the gateway area visitors arrive to the Park, usually via private automobile, and change mode to ride shuttle transportation into Zion Canyon. The challenges include waiting times of 10 to 22 minutes at the park’s primary entrance station on many summer days, parking lots at the Park visitor center that are routinely filled to capacity between 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. on most summer days (forcing visitors to park their vehicles on the streets of Springdale - the Park’s gateway community), insufficient parking for recreational vehicles, inadequate wayfinding for motorists and pedestrians, visitor crowding, and a variety of related issues. This paper offers analyses of the primary transportation issues and describes alternatives for improving transportation and, in turn, visitor experience. The needed entrance station capacity to avoid queuing and waiting times is presented, along with alternatives for providing that level of capacity. An evaluation of parking demand and parking alternatives that are being considered by the Park are described.

• Record URL:
  http://www.westernite.org/annualmeetings/13_Phoenix/Presentations/Session%208A%20-%20Upchurch.pdf
• 
• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADA40 Transportation Needs of National Parks and Public Lands.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Upchurch, Jonathan
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Photos; References;
• Pagination: 12p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Alternatives analysis; Crowds; Parking; Parking demand; Shuttle service; Tourism; Transportation planning; Waiting time; Wayfinding
• Geographic Terms: Springdale (Utah); Zion National Park
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01517437
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-2888
• Files: PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 8 2014 10:57AM