Glacier’s Going-to-the-Sun Road: How the 2021 Ticketed Entry Pilot Worked

Glacier National Park has seen a 60 percent rise in visitation over the past decade, most of it between Memorial Day and Labor Day and much of it on the Going-to-the-Sun Road (GTSR). The road is a National Historic Landmark, built in the 1920s and finished in 1933, and its builders never imagined having to limit how many people drive it. In 2021 the park did, with a ticketed entry pilot. An NPS article by Melissa Sladek explains how the system was designed and what the park learned.

Cars line up to enter Glacier National Park during the 2021 Ticketed Entry Pilot Program. NPS photo.

Why the park acted

The park's 1999 General Management Plan treats visitor use as an issue, but a plan specific to the GTSR did not come until 2019. The Going-to-the-Sun Road Corridor Management Plan used visitor-use counts and visitor-experience data gathered by the University of Montana, and it lists actions to take if certain triggers occur without saying how to carry them out. With 2019 the second-highest visitation year and COVID-19 challenges continuing, managers knew that access had to be managed in 2021.

By early 2021 it was clear the season would be unprecedented, and a local visitors bureau wrote in March supporting an advance reservation system. Rocky Mountain and Yosemite had piloted ticketed entry in 2020 with success, and Glacier had been considering it since 2020. What tipped the decision was a request from the Montana Department of Transportation, which was planning the extensive 2021 Highway 2 Pavement Preservation Project and wanted the park to keep vehicles from backing onto the highway while waiting to enter the West Entrance. Planning and Compliance Chief Mary Riddle called this the straw that broke the camel's back.

Vehicles wait to enter the Logan Pass Visitor Center parking lot. NPS photo.

The goals

A Congestion Management Team of key staff set the goals for the pilot:

• reduce congestion in West Glacier;
• prevent closure of the West Entrance and gridlock on the GTSR and Highway 2;
• improve visitor use management throughout the park;
• give visitors certainty on entering;
• set expectations and communicate with the public;
• reopen the East Side entrances.

Choosing a number

To ease congestion, visitors had to be spread out in space and in time, so the park needed a daily vehicle limit for the road. Public Lands Transportation Fellow Ma'ayan Dembo of the NPS Alternative Transportation Program worked it out from 2018 and 2019 use (2020 was left out because of COVID).

1. She estimated how many vehicles per day were exempt from buying a GTSR pass because they held reservations for lodging, camping or other services, using concessioner reports and campground data. Those vehicles still add to congestion.
2. Because the GTSR pass is good for seven days and visitors stay an average of three, she assumed a 40 percent no-show rate for the unused days.
3. Managers settled on 4,600 vehicles a day on the road as the amount that would shave the peaks and avoid gridlock that could block emergency traffic.
4. The number of tickets sold each day on Recreation.gov was that total minus the exempt vehicles. Tickets went on sale 60 days ahead, starting April 29, and sold out within minutes, as they did all season.

Total daily vehicles on the Going-to-the-Sun Road from June 1 to August 28, 2019 and 2021. The dotted purple line is the desired 4,600 daily vehicles. Chart from NPS.

Watching the results

Radar traffic counters recorded hourly entrances and exits at the West, St. Mary and Camas Road Entrances, with more counters at Polebridge, Two Medicine and Many Glacier to see where displaced visitors went. Field staff reported when parking lots and pullouts filled, and University of Montana researchers monitored trails and lots. Real-time data let managers release extra tickets during the season once they saw how many vehicles the road could actually hold without gridlock.

Average hourly vehicle entries on the GTSR in 2019 and 2021. The 2021 line spikes in the early morning and after 5:00 p.m., outside ticketed hours. Chart from NPS.

What happened

Dembo judged the pilot a success. It spread visitors across the park and across the day, and no gridlock formed on the GTSR or at the West Entrance, even though the daily vehicle count rose well above the planned 4,600. Entries spiked before 6:00 a.m. and after 5:00 p.m., when tickets were not required, but not enough to cause gridlock or close the West Entrance. She estimated that without ticketed entry the West Entrance would have closed 35 times, judging from data on high-use days.

• Vehicles on the GTSR fell 12 percent from Memorial Day through the end of August. Some may have turned around and left, while others went on to the Two Medicine and North Fork valleys, which saw increases of 33 and 20 percent from 2019 to 2021.
• After Labor Day, entries at St. Mary, which had dropped during ticketed entry, returned to roughly 2019 levels, and visitation at the West Entrance rose after ticketed entry ended to above 2019 levels.

Dembo cautioned that it is hard to say what the later rise means, though it may hint at how busy the park would have been without the system. Riddle said the data show the park managed how many people came in and kept it at a level where it could serve visitors and protect resources, a major goal with limited staff and services during COVID-19.

What comes next

Opportunities remain, such as reducing impacts on other parts of the park. Park leaders planned to use the 2021 data to decide when and where to use ticketed entry in 2022, review the effects on other areas, consider the effect of early-morning and late-evening visitation on nocturnal wildlife, and plan how to tell businesses, visitors and neighboring land managers about it. The author ends on the point that parks like Glacier need transportation planners, much as they need road crews and educators.

Sources

• National Park Service, "Glacier's Going-to-the-Sun Road: Managing for the Future" (article by Melissa Sladek), https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/ticketed-entry.htm; rewritten in hubnx's own words.