Bonus | Vehicle Reservations

As parks become more and more popular, what do we want the visitor experience to be like? In this bonus episode, learn how Glacier is trying to answer this question.

As parks become more and more popular, what do we want the visitor experience to be like? In this bonus episode, learn how Glacier is trying to answer this question.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Lacy Kowalski: Headwaters is supported by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

[drumbeats]

Peri Sasnett: I’m Peri, and you’re listening to Headwaters, a show about how Glacier National Park is connected to everything else.

[drumbeats intensify and then fade]

Peri: So my first season working on the podcast was in 2021—for the whitebark pine story—but that wasn’t actually my first season in Glacier. I started here in 2017, which was a historic year: the first time we counted more than 3 million visits to the park in a single year. And in July 2017 alone, Glacier broke records for the most visits in a single month.

It was overwhelming as a brand-new employee, but it was also overwhelming for longtime rangers. Traffic often slowed to a halt, it was impossible to find parking in the middle of the day, and emergency calls felt nonstop. A lot of days, rangers would have to close this or that gate to the park because it was just too full. I would get alerts from dispatch all the time—West Entrance is closed, Bowman Lake access is closed, Many Glacier entrance is closed—because there were so many cars that emergency vehicles couldn’t get into these areas.

Summers like this got people thinking about the future: as parks become more and more popular, what do we want the visitor experience to be like? How will Glacier, and parks across the country, respond to this increasing visitation?

[beats with base begin to play]

In this bonus episode, we take a look at how Glacier is trying to answer these questions. The park’s vehicle reservation system has just begun for 2023, which means that visitors need reservations to enter popular areas of the park during peak hours. To learn more about how the system works—where to get a reservation and whether you’ll need one—visit our website. But to learn about why Glacier is trying this system in the first place, my cohost Daniel talked to Dr. Susie Sidder, who researches visitation at the park—studying why visitors come here, what they’re looking for, and what their experience is like.

[beats with base intensify then fade]

Daniel Lombardi: So, Susie, will you introduce yourself?

Susie Sidder: Yeah, happy to. My name is Susie Sidder, and I am the Visitor Use Management Program Manager here at Glacier National Park.

Daniel: The park gets a lot of visitors. We have millions of people visit here. And your job is to help figure out how to make that go smoothly.

Susie: Yeah, and we use lots of different techniques for that.

Daniel: Maybe let's, let's zoom out. Let's think about the big picture. Why does this exist?

Susie: At Glacier, we receive upwards of 3 million recreation visits annually, and that's a lot of different people that are trying to come into Glacier. We kind of reach a point where we have to start really understanding how can we help people come to the park while also still achieving that mission of protecting natural and cultural resources, not only for visitors to experience today, but also to ensuring that those resources are available for our future visitors. And so Glacier is not the only national park that has started to really invest quite a bit in trying to understand visitor use and to manage visitor use across the national park system, we are seeing many different types of parks start to engage in more systematic ways of managing visitation.

Daniel: So okay, Susie, it sounds like what you're describing is, is I guess I've heard it called a dual mandate: that the Park Service has to balance protecting and preserving the place while still allowing people to enjoy it today.

Susie: I definitely find myself in a balancing act. My background is focused on natural resources, specifically like thinking about things like wildlife and soil and plants. That was my undergraduate degree. But slowly through my education, I started realizing that there's also a very real human component to understanding how we can protect and preserve resources. Daniel: One of the ways that Glacier is kind of finding that balance between preserving and protecting this place, but also allowing for its future and current enjoyment is through managed access. Specifically, there's a program now we have called vehicle reservations. Right?

Susie: Right.

Daniel: So, well, let's start. What is managed access?

Susie: So managed access is when any type of protected area in this case, Glacier, decides that we need some sideboards, some boundaries, around how and when people can come.

Daniel: Like this is something that exists not just here at Glacier. Managed access is like a, a process or a system that national parks do all the time. Right?

Susie: Right.

Daniel: What are some examples? If you're going to tour a historic house or museum, you can't just go in, like you have to at least go up to the front desk and sign in because they don't let unlimited amount of people into the building at once. Is that managed access then?

Susie: Yes, that's definitely managed access. And it's a different type of managed access than we're using at Glacier, where our system is designed around vehicles. But it's exactly that. Managed access is when you have to select a scheduled tour time before you arrive at a national historic site. Managed access is when you have to get a permit to float a river. Managed access is when you need to purchase a ticket in order to ride a shuttle. So there are many different ways that parks can manage where and when people go.

Daniel: So there's all kinds of managed access systems that different national parks do all the time. Like this is a thing that has existed for a long time. I think a maybe one, one example that comes to my mind is Denali, Denali National Park in Alaska. Right? They have a managed access system. How does that one work?

Susie: I actually went to Denali as a visitor in 2018 and got to experience their managed access system and I just thought it was so cool. And so I rode on a shuttle all the way to the Eielson Visitor Center.

Daniel: So in Denali, there's like one main road, and it's this long dirt road. Most people, they hop on a shuttle bus to go down that road and see—that's the main way they see Denali.

Susie: Yeah, we saw all different kinds of wildlife, several different instances of brown bear crossing the road. There was a mother brown bear with her cubs.

Daniel: Oh, cool.

Susie: We saw moose. It was just a really unique experience, and I definitely attribute that to the success of the managed access system that they've designed.

Daniel: That's cool. And Denali didn't just like randomly make that up. A lot of social science, I'm sure, went into that. So let's talk about how is the science getting put into practice here in Glacier? Glacier has a system of managed access and it's called vehicle reservations.

Susie: So the vehicle reservation system is a system that's designed to allow predictable visitor access.

Daniel: Basically, tell me if this is right. A vehicle reservation is like a dinner reservation.

Susie: Yes, in a way, a vehicle reservation is like a dinner reservation. Before you arrive at Glacier, you've got to get a vehicle reservation in advance.

Daniel: Okay. So you want to go out to dinner somewhere that's popular, really popular. That's fine, you know you can't just show up. You're going to need a reservation. So you call ahead, you get a reservation, and that, that ensures you that you're going to have a table when you get there.

Susie: It's kind of like that. So our reservation system guarantees entry into the park and that allows visitors to drive on our park roads. So once you get in with your vehicle reservation, you can make whatever decisions you want in terms of where you drive or where you park. And sometimes parking isn't always available at those key destinations. But with the vehicle reservation, what you're guaranteed is entry into the park—that reliable access. If we're going back to the dinner example, we can think about when you might need a dinner reservation. So if I want to go to a popular restaurant at seven, I probably do need a dinner reservation. But maybe if I want to go to the restaurant at three thirty or four, right when it opens, I probably don't need a dinner reservation.

Daniel: Right.

Susie: Depending on how popular it is.

Daniel: And the same thing is true here at Glacier.

Susie: Exactly.

Daniel: You only need a reservation for your vehicle for the peak hours.

Susie: Yes.

Daniel: So in Glacier, what are the—what's our peak time? What's our dinner rush in Glacier National Park?

Susie: So in Glacier, that often falls right around the middle of the day. So you can think about, you know, visitors are in their hotel rooms, they’re waking up in the morning, they decide to drive to Glacier. And before we had the managed access system, many people were following kind of that same routine and arriving right around the same time.

[drumbeats marks a transition]

[Swainson’s thrush singing; Townsend’s warbler singing; footsteps]

Daniel: [in the field] I'm really curious to see how this whole thing is playing out on the ground. [birds singing] So I'm going to walk through the forest here to where the Rangers are greeting visitors and helping them navigate the new system. [footsteps] It's kind of one of those wet mornings where the clouds are stormy, but there's also sun beaming in, and that might be slowing down the busyness of the park a little bit.

Ranger: Yeah, we'd like for it to be a little bit busier, but it's busy enough to where we can get some good training in and stuff like that. So it's nice that we didn't get crushed on the first day. So it'll pick up later today for sure.

[car drives by]

Daniel: [in the field] The Rangers are — they seem to be having quite a bit of fun there. They have a good group here. The whole mission is to help people navigate the new system as they come into the park. And pretty much everyone's smiling this whole time. Ranger: Morning, welcome to Glacier! Do you have a vehicle reservation?

Visitor: Thank you, have a great day!

Ranger: You too.

Daniel: [as car drives by] And here comes in another car, so the Rangers are going to stop and give them some information about the vehicle reservation system. [ranger conversing with visitor in the background]

Ranger: Do you have a vehicle reservation for today? Awesome.

Daniel: [as car drives by] Okay. So this is cool, this this car definitely has their vehicle reservation ready to go. They're holding up their phone. They've got the, they've got the vehicle reservation right on hand. So that was pretty smooth. [car driving by] Looks like they're from Wisconsin. They're driving into the park now. I'm guessing that the mid-morning is probably the busiest time for these Rangers. Talking to everyone about vehicle reservations. The cars are starting to come in a little bit faster now.

Ranger: Ticketed entry starts today through the park between 6 a.m. to 3 p.m.. Yeah you need a reservation for your vehicle. I'm just gonna have you take a right at the stop sign, there's more people waiting around the corner to give you information. All right.

Daniel: [as car drives by] That car had a couple of really cute dogs and they didn't have their vehicle reservation. They didn't seem to know about the system. So the Rangers directed them to just pull into a spot where they can park and learn about how it all works.

[drumbeats mark a transition]

Daniel: [to Susie] When it all boils down like, what are we really doing with the vehicle reservation system? What are we trying to do?

Susie: Specifically, we want people to have a good time when they come and have an awesome visitor experience. And we also want to make sure that the number of people in the park is not an unsafe number.

Daniel: Yeah.

Susie: And so what happens when we get a lot of people that want to drive into Glacier all at the same time is that our parking lots and our roads physically reach a limit where no more vehicles can move.

Daniel: Bumper-to-bumper in a national park.

Susie: Exactly. Bumper-to-bumper in a national park. And if you're looking at wildlife and you're stopped still on the road, that's probably awesome.

Daniel: Yeah.

Susie: You can get that chance to get that photo or see that grizzly. But if you're having a medical emergency or if you just really need to use the bathroom and are looking to reach a visitor facility, or if you have a kid in the car that screaming, that can be a really stressful situation. And so when we get that bumper-to-bumper traffic, that also means that not only can visitors not move, but our law enforcement and our emergency response folks also can't move in that system. And so that was definitely happening in Glacier before managed access.

Daniel: It's really a balance of all these different concerns and values and things you're trying to achieve. But two things that resonate with me the most are just safety and emergency management, making sure that there's not too many people in case of an emergency, and then two, like just preserving the experience that people want to come to Glacier to have. And that's not bumper-to-bumper traffic.

[red-breasted nuthatch singing]

Daniel: [in the field] I wanted to get one more layer to the vehicle reservation system. So we actually came into the park and I'm in Apgar now, and everyone here, they somehow got in through the vehicle reservation system. So we're just going to chat with some people and see what they have to say. [Western tanager sings] It's really nice here this morning, just walking along the shore of Lake McDonald [Western tanager sings] and people are enjoying the park and it's kind of cloudy, but sunny and...

Visitor: Are you recording bird sounds?

Daniel: [in the field] We are recording for Glacier’s podcast. Um, so we're just talking to people about the vehicle reservation system and seeing what they think of it and stuff like that.

Visitor: I did it last year.

Daniel: [in the field] How did it go?

Visitor: Oh, we didn't get a Going-to-the-Sun pass the first try, but we got it for the next day. So.

Daniel: [in the field] So you found it to be okay?

Carrie: Well, I had to wake up and make sure that I was on the website first thing in the morning when it opened to get a pass. And I didn't get one, like I said, the first day, but the second day I was able to for Going-to-the-Sun. But for the first day we decided to go through the Polebridge side. So we had a good experience up there on the first day and then spent our second day on Going-to-the-Sun. But yeah, it was frustrating because people are trying to get those permits like first thing in the morning and they go really quickly. Yeah.

Daniel: [in the field] Are you from around here?

Carrie: Oregon.

Daniel: [in the field] Okay. So you knew you were coming out, though, and you planned ahead?

Carrie: Correct. Okay. Yeah. I knew about the system and planned ahead, and so that was helpful. I think a lot of people probably get frustrated if they don't know about it. But it was nice because there wasn't, there was a lot of traffic, but it wasn't like an overabundance. So it was a little easier to navigate through Going-to-the-Sun Road and find parking spots for pull offs and stuff like that.

Daniel: [in the field] Okay. So that visitor kind of expressed how a lot of people feel about the vehicle reservation system. I think anyway, like, no one's really excited about it, but they definitely see advantages and disadvantages. It's frustrating sometimes if you don't get a reservation, but on the other hand, you come into the park and when you have one it, your visit can be really smooth and pleasant because it's not nearly as crowded.

[drumbeats mark a transition]

Susie: [to Daniel] We want people to come to Glacier and remember the beautiful hiking, the wildlife, the really awesome interpretive ranger that taught them about the park's history.

Daniel: [to Susie] It's a balance between trying to protect wildlife and... but it's also so that you can come and enjoy the park the way that you know you're expecting to and not be in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Susie: Yes. And this is just one type of managed access system.

Daniel: I guess one of the main takeaways I'm having then is that it's not set in stone. It's not like this is how it's going to be like. It's a constant process of studying and figuring out what works best in any given park or any given region of a park.

Susie: And then if it's not, changing course.

Daniel: Trying something else

Susie: Trying something else.

Daniel: Cool. Well, thanks for coming and chatting with us, Susie.

Susie: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. And I'll see you out in the park this summer.

Daniel: Great.

[calm piano music plays under the credits] Peri: Headwaters is a production of Glacier National Park with support from our partner, the Glacier National Park Conservancy. This episode was made by Daniel Lombardi, Peri Sasnett, Michael Faist, and Gaby Eseverri. Frank Waln wrote and performed our music. Thank you to Dr. Susie Sidder and the whole vehicle reservation team. Check out our website at nps.gov/glac if you’re looking for detailed information about vehicle reservations. Thanks for listening.