The National Park of the Future: Shuttles, E-Bikes and Emerging Mobility

A ranger at a dockless e-scooter parking area, National Mall and Memorial Parks. NPS.

Parks and cars

National parks honor the nation's natural and cultural heritage — and, in a way, its love of cars. Roads shape the parks and how we see them, and the parks anchor the great American road trip.

But many park roads now feel more like rush hour than wilderness. The Park Service's answer is emerging mobility: carefully chosen technologies that could make parks cleaner and quieter — wild and rustic again — for both the land and the people.

A day in 2042

The article imagines a visit twenty years out:

• You leave your car at the entrance and board a silent electric shuttle, where a virtual ranger points out wildlife that barely notices you gliding by.
• The visitor center sits in a flowering meadow where the parking lot used to be. An interactive map shows the north pass closed by snow and a live visitor heatmap showing crowds in the west watching the bison rut — so you head south to the lake.
• Your entrance pass unlocks an e-bike with a 50-mile range. Hiker-only trails are digitally off-limits to it, but each trailhead has a dock to recharge while you walk.
• At the lake, your pass unlocks a kayak from a paddle-share (like the Mississippi River Paddle Share).
• You doze on the shuttle back to the lodge.

It has already begun

TEDDY, The Electric Driverless Demonstration at Yellowstone, an automated shuttle pilot, summer 2021. NPS.

• Automated shuttles: in 2021 the Park Service piloted them for the first time, at Yellowstone and Wright Brothers National Memorial.
• Shared e-bikes and e-scooters: in daily use on the National Mall, at Golden Gate National Recreation Area and in Yosemite.
• Car-free canyons: at Zion, visitors already experience the canyon without cars, and electric buses will soon make it quieter still.

With these parks, the Emerging Mobility Initiative is working toward newer, more authentic and more sustainable ways to reach and experience the parks.

Sources

Based on "A Visit to the National Park of the Future: Innovative transportation and emerging mobility to maximize sustainability and visitor experience," National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.