Glacier transit center to expand

Glacier National Park has completed an analysis for an expansion of the Apgar Transit Center parking lot and the project has been approved.

The National Park Service’s regional director signed a “Finding of No Significant Impact” document for the expansion, which is expected to get under way this fall and continue next spring.

The park plans to expand the lot about 90 feet to the north and 90 feet to the east, providing about 190 to 195 spaces for passenger vehicles, including nine handicapped-accessible spaces and 21 spaces for recreational or oversized vehicles.

The park conducted an environmental assessment that was released for public comment in April. Twelve letters were received, none of them opposing the project.

Constructed in 2007 as part of the Going-to-the-Sun Road rehabilitation project, the transit center has been a staging area for the park’s shuttle bus system. During the busy summer season, thousands of visitors use the facility, and the parking lot is often full in July and August. In the near future, the park intends to move visitor center operations from the existing visitor contact station — a small, converted house in the center of Apgar Village — to the transit center as a first step toward implementing a decision from the park’s 1999 General Management Plan to develop a visitor center and museum at the site. The existing parking lot is too small to accommodate additional parking once visitor center operations are moved.