In the year 2000 Zion National Park introduced the Zion Canyon Shuttle to transport visitors into Zion Canyon while alleviating traffic congestion and improving visitor experience. Now in its 14th season of operation, the Shuttle is successfully accomplishing those goals and receives kudos from Park visitors. Continued and increasing popularity of Zion National Park – now with 2.8 million visitors annually - has created new transportation challenges at the gateway to the Park. At the gateway area visitors arrive to the Park, usually via private automobile, and change mode to ride shuttle transportation into Zion Canyon. The challenges include waiting times of 10 to 22 minutes at the park’s primary entrance station on many summer days, parking lots at the Park visitor center that are routinely filled to capacity between 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. on most summer days (forcing visitors to park their vehicles on the streets of Springdale - the Park’s gateway community), insufficient parking for recreational vehicles, inadequate wayfinding for motorists and pedestrians, visitor crowding, and a variety of related issues. This paper offers analyses of the primary transportation issues and describes alternatives for improving transportation and, in turn, visitor experience. The needed entrance station capacity to avoid queuing and waiting times is presented, along with alternatives for providing that level of capacity. An evaluation of parking demand and parking alternatives that are being considered by the Park are described.
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