Transit Grants Awarded to National Parks

by Thomas J. Sheeran, Associated Press
San Francisco Chronicle - August 28, 2006

Federal officials awarded grants Monday totaling almost $20 million to reduce traffic in national parks and public lands by providing alternative transit, including trains, shuttle buses and bicycle trails.

The grants were announced in the 33,000-acre Cuyahoga Valley National Park by Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett and Federal Transit Administrator James Simpson. The officials climbed aboard the park's historic train for a tour after the announcement, which included $898,000 in grants for upgrades to the rail.

Congestion is a growing problem in the nation's national parks and public lands, which have 700 million visitors annually, Simpson said.

"By and large those visitors currently have only one way of getting in and around our national treasures: by car," he said.

The goal of the Alternative Transportation in the Parks and Public Lands program is to reduce pollution and congestion, preserve parklands and wildlife areas, and increase access for visitors, including the disabled.

The biggest of the 42 grants included $4.7 million to buy rail cars for the Chugach National Forest in Alaska, $1.7 million to buy four buses for Colorado's White River National Forest, $1.4 million for propane-powered buses for Maine's Acadia National Park and $1.2 million for a replacement boat dock at Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska.

Other projects include two park-and-ride lots at California's Yosemite National Park, a traffic study at the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and visitor tram equipment at the Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts.

The grants will total $97 million by 2009, Scarlett and Simpson said.