Zion National Park, Utah

Abstract

In 2000, Zion National Park in Utah introduced the Zion Canyon shuttle to transport visitors into Zion Canyon while alleviating traffic congestion and improving visitor experience. Now in its 16th season of operation, the shuttle is successfully accomplishing those goals and receives kudos from park visitors. The continued and increasing popularity of Zion National Park, with 3.2 million visitors in 2014, has created new transportation challenges at the gateway to the park. At the gateway area, visitors arrive at the park, usually in private automobile, and change modes to ride the shuttle into Zion Canyon. The challenges include waiting times of 10 to 22 min 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 on the streets of Springdale, Utah, the park's gateway community), insufficient parking for recreational vehicles, visitor crowding, and a variety of related issues. This paper offers analyses of the primary transportation issues and describes alternatives for improving transportation and 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 being considered by the park is described. An analysis of shuttle bus capacity shows an ability to absorb additional hourly demand created by entrance station improvements.