Glacier shuttle set to close on Monday
The Daily Inter Lake
Glacier National Park visitors have less than a week to use the park's new transit system.
The shuttle system is set to close for the season Sept. 3, which is Labor Day.
The fleet of low-emission, fuel-efficient shuttle buses quickly became popular with visitors and reduced traffic on Going-to-the-Sun Road by about 20 percent, Glacier National Park Superintendent Mick Holm said.
"We are extremely pleased with the public response from this first season of operation," he said in a prepared statement.
Based on studies and recommendations from the 2001-02 Going-to-the-Sun Road Citizens Advisory Committee, the collective goal of the National Park Service and the Federal Highway Administration was to reduce summer vehicle traffic by 10 percent to 12 percent on the Sun Road to lessen traffic congestion at work zones during the 8- to 10-year road reconstruction project.
The free transit service is in addition to guided park tours from a Blackfeet perspective with Sun Tours and aboard the historic red buses with Glacier Park Inc.
During the shuttle system's pilot season, Glacier borrowed five buses from Yellowstone National Park for the east side (St. Mary Valley) operation.
The first of eight larger-capacity (28-passenger) buses, purchased mostly through Montana Department of Transportation money, arrived at the park Tuesday, just in time for the buses to be folded into the east-side operation for Labor Day weekend.
The Apgar Transit Center will remain available to provide parking and rest rooms.
This fall, following vehicle servicing, the fleet of Sun Road shuttle buses will begin operating in various transit systems throughout the state as part of the next phase of the three-way interagency cooperative agreement between the state Department of Transportation, Flathead County's Eagle Transit Authority and the National Park Service.
Details are pending for the year-round operation, Holm said, but it allows the fleet to be used instead of sitting in storage in the winter.