Visitor Access and Experience Plan

Public Comment Period Now Open

The public comment period for Arches' Visitor Access and Experience Plan is open from October 24 through November 23, 2024.

 

Hikers climb the trail toward North Window.

 

 

Overview

The purpose of the Visitor Access and Experience Plan is to provide predictable, safe, and efficient access for visitors while ensuring that park resources and values are protected and that visitors can enjoy a variety of high-quality experiences.

The plan is needed to address persistant issues associated with traffic congestion along roadways and parking lots and crowded conditions at key visitor destinations. Action is needed to:

• Address peak-season traffic congestion along the main park road and in parking lots and minimize associated safety hazards;
• Enhance the quality and predictability of visitor access to the park;
• Ensure high quality visitor experiences at attraction sites and along trails;
• Protect sensitive resources along trails and roadways; and
• Address facility overuse.

 

Background

Visitation to the park increased by 74% between 2011 and 2021, with record high visitation of 1.8 million visits in 2021. This growth in visitation has resulted in parking congestion, long wait times at the entrance station, and crowding at key sites in the park accessed from the scenic drive corridor. Visitors’ frustration over these circumstances has diminished the quality of their experience in the park.

Past efforts to address congestion and its related issues have included messaging strategies, operational changes, facilities improvements (expanded parking lots), increased staffing. The park undertook an Alternative Transportation System and Congestion Management Study in 2011 and initiated a Traffic Congestion Management Plan in 2015. Despite these efforts, congestion remained an issue.

In 2018, park staff began closing the main entrance for as long as 3 to 5 hours during times of high visitation until congestion lessened. These temporary entrance station closures were unpredictable and negatively affected visitor access to the park. The NPS has spent the ensuing five years closely monitoring visitor patterns; collecting surveys and socioeconomic data; seeking input from Tribal Nations, stakeholders, and the public; and exploring potential future solutions to these issues.

The park piloted a timed entry reservation system in 2022, 2023, and 2024 as a way to reduce congestion by leveling out visitation across the busy season. During the pilots, the park adjusted the times, length, and start and end dates of reservation periods; purchase lead times; and volume of tickets based on lessons learned and feedback received. Arches will implement another pilot timed entry reservation system in 2025 with further adjustments.

The park is now prepared to implement a long-term strategy to address these congestion-related issues, improve the visitor experience, and protect park resources.

The current public engagement period is an chance for people to review the Visitor Access and Experience Plan and submit their comments.

 

FAQs

 

 

When are you making a final decision? When will it be announced?

Before making a final decision on this plan the NPS will consider the comments received during this public engagement period. Information for people planning spring 2025 visits will be announced separately.

What kind of comments are you looking for?

We are most interested in substantive comments that might improve, challenge, or add to the plan and enhance the NPS's ability to make an informed decision.

Will the number of comments received determine the outcome?

Public comment periods are opportunities for people to share their input to help make the plan as strong and informative as possible. They are not votes.

How and why is Arches’ plan different from similar programs at other parks in the region?

Three parks within a day’s drive of Arches have some kind of pilot or permanent managed access system: Rocky Mountain National Park, Glacier National Park, and Zion National Park.  

Rocky Mountain National Park has two timed-entry reservation systems: one for Bear Lake and another for the entire park. Rocky is large—over 400 square miles—and has four major park roads, yet the majority of visitation occurs along the Bear Lake Road corridor. Arches is around one quarter of the size of Rocky and only has one main park road, yet congestion issues have been identified at three locations. Thus, a single, park-wide timed entry program is more suited for Arches. 

Currently, Zion National Park does not have a timed entry reservation requirement to enter the park. The park does have a shuttle system and has been piloting a site-specific timed reservation lottery system for Angels Landing. A mandatory shuttle at Arches would cost considerably more per visitor than at Zion due to the length of park roads and distances between primary sites. The EA describes in detail why shuttles were dismissed for consideration at Arches. Most visitors visit more than one of the identified congested areas at Arches, so requiring separate permits for each of them would diminish visitor’s quality of experience and predictability of access if they were not able to obtain all their desired permits for coordinated times on the same day. 

Glacier National Park has piloted several timed entry reservation systems since 2021. Like Arches, Glacier has adjusted their pilots each year. For example, in one pilot, Glacier offered a daily pass that was valid for three days and is now (in 2024) piloting a single day daily reservation system. Glacier is an even larger park than Rocky, at over 1,500 square miles, and many of their visitors stay for at least one whole day, if not multiple days. Arches is less than ten percent of Glacier’s size and its average visitor stay is only four to six hours. To maintain desired conditions with a daily reservation system, Arches would have to release fewer three-day or daily passes than can be offered through a timed entry system, which would reduce visitor access to the park. 

Why don't you just build more facilities or parking?

Arches National Park has already expanded its available parking capacity by 98%. Other parks experiencing congestion have tried expanding parking, adding more entrance stations, and/or adding transit services (shuttles). One counterintuitive lesson learned was that congestion often continued—and sometimes worsened—after adding capacity. Some very popular sites may already be exceeding visitor capacity thresholds, and more parking would only increase congestion at scenic viewpoints and on the popular trails, further deteriorating the visitor experience. 

Most of Arches beyond the main scenic drive and its established trails and viewpoints is managed as recommended wilderness. Developing those places to receive higher levels of visitation would substantially impact the resources there and may only create new areas of congestion. 

Does requiring reservations mean fewer people will visit Moab?

Travel to the Moab area is affected by many factors, only one of which is visitation to Arches. Since the timed entry pilots began, some people in the local community have expressed concern that requiring reservations at Arches would cause people to stop coming to Moab. Others have long worried that unchecked increases in congestion within the park might also cause the same outcome.

NPS has worked closely with businesses and communities to understand the negative impacts of congestion. We conducted a socioeconomic analysis to understand the relationship between Arches' visitation and local area economic activity and the potential impacts of managed access at Arches on local businesses. Before the timed entry pilots, when park access was temporarily restricted due to lack of available parking, visitors may have chosen to just leave Moab earlier than planned, resulting in underutilized services such as restaurants and retail outlets. 

Local businesses may also benefit from ticketed entry systems. For example, during the pilot systems at Arches, all businesses that acquired a Commercial Use Authorization were granted access to the park at any time without a timed entry ticket, resulting in reliable access for those businesses and better experiences for their customers. Visitors whose access is secured thanks to a timed entry ticket are less liable to depart early. Visitors who don't have a reservation and decide to visit Arches after 4 p.m. (when they are no longer required) or obtain a “next day" timed entry ticket may be encouraged to stay an extra day, thus spending additional money in the local community.

Is the park aware of visitors' frustrations about needing a reservation?

Yes, we have heard from some park visitors who do not appreciate needing reservations. We have also heard from many visitors, including residents local to Utah and the Moab community, that they feel their visitor experience has been improved by the pilot timed entry permit system.

 

Newsletter

Learn more about this plan by viewing the latest project newsletter.

For additional background information, see the StoryMap prepared for the 2021 public engagement efforts and discussed during the virtual public meetings (see YouTube links below).

 

Public Outreach & Meetings

Engaging with the public is an important part of this planning process and is essential when exploring management alternatives.

Public Engagement During Planning

• On October 15, 2019 we hosted a public meeting in Moab, UT, to discuss visitor experiences at Arches National Park. NPS presented information from ongoing studies on visitors’ experience, transportation opportunities, and traffic patterns and dynamics. Learn more about this meeting.
• In September 2021 we invited the public to provide comments and thoughts on the draft preliminary strategies. Feedback was instrumental in helping NPS staff develop this plan. View recordings of the September 8, 2021 and September 10, 2021 virtual meetings to hear what was discussed.

Public Meetings

Interested members of the public are invited to learn more about the Visitor Access and Experience Plan at one of the following meetings:

• Virtual Public Meeting

November 13, 2024 at 12:00-2:00 p.m. MT
We encourage you to register for the meeting online in advance.

• In-Person Open House

November 14, 2024 at 5:30-7:30 p.m. MT at the Grand Center in Moab, UT (182 N 500 W, Moab, UT 84532). No prior sign up is necessary.