The Long and Winding Road
Long-awaited transportation bill paves way for smoother roads, but falls short of park system needs.
 Following nine extensions and a two-year delay, Congress finally passed the Transportation Equity Act in August, then handed the bill to President Bush, who signed the legislation on August 10th. Congress generally revisits transportation funding every six years, appropriating money for mass transit and highway construction throughout the country, including roads within the national parks. It’s a crucial bit of legislation, as the National Park Service (NPS) itself estimates that 65 percent of the more than 5,000 miles of paved roads in its system are in poor to fair condition.
As usual, the legislation contains some good news and some bad news. First, the good: NPCA’s close work with Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) and Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV) yielded an alternative transportation program funded at $24 million per year, beginning in 2006. The move is one step toward improving conditions in parks where more pavement clearly isn’t the answer. As NPCA’s report Faded Glory revealed, in recent summers, nearly 6,000 vehicles often jockey for 2,400 parking spaces at Grand Canyon, while at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 9 million people annually crowd park roads, turning a 40-minute drive through Cades Cove into a 4-hour expedition. Parks like these will soon be able to dip into that funding to pay for shuttle bus transportation systems, pedestrian walkways, bike paths, and waterborne access.
Congress also made specific provisions to fund the repair of the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park, Montana, a road in need of extensive repairs expected to cost between $140 million and $170 million.
“It’s been nearly 80 years since this road opened and it’s in need of a major overhaul,” says Gary Danczyk, project manager for Glacier’s Going-to-the-Sun Road Mitigation Team. “It’s an alpine road in a harsh environment—with avalanches that have pounded the road, the freeze and thaw conditions and the harsh environment. Eighty years of patchwork maintenance have been done on the road, so it’s in need of a comprehensive end-to-end reconstruction.”
NPS will work with the Federal Highway Administration to select a contractor to perform the work on the 50 miles of roadway carved through the mountains; large-scale construction should begin in the spring of 2007 and last seven or eight years. During that time, Glacier National Park and the neighboring communities need to be sure that visitors have access to the road and what lies at the other end, so the Park Service is working with nearby counties to provide a shuttle system for the duration. With any luck, the system will prove successful enough to continue afterward, limiting pollution, lowering congestion, and eliminating the need to pave over scenic areas for additional parking lots.
Unfortunately, not all parks received such a windfall.
Although President Bush’s 2000 pledge to eliminate the Park Service’s $4.9 billion backlog and to “restore and renew” the national parks hinged upon the transportation bill, Congress failed to fulfill the president’s request to double park roads funding from $165 million to $320 million annually. The final funding level approved for the program averages out to $210 million per year, less than half of the $450 million per year NPS has estimated it needs to retire the road repair backlog and bring most park roads into good condition. NPCA played a crucial role in ensuring the parks will have $50 million more per year, on average, than they have had in recent years. But the remaining gap increases the need for the president and members of Congress to back the Centennial Act, which would ensure sufficient funding for the Park Service in time for its 100th anniversary in 2016.
On a related note, the fiscal year 2006 budget passed by Congress provides a total of nearly $1.7 billion for the operating needs of the national parks—a modest increase of $52 million over the previous year. Congress also allocated $35 million to allow the Park Service to purchase land now threatened by development from willing sellers. That’s $20 million less than was available to parks the previous year, $7 million less than the administration had requested. But some important projects did receive funding, including $2 million for Big Thicket National Preserve, $2 million for Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, and $1.6 million for Lewis and Clark National Historical Park.
|
