The new millennium finds Grand Canyon National Park considering an ambitious plan for altering the park. This plan, known as the General Management Plan, dates to the tail-end of a 2-decade period during which park visitation more than doubled to 4.6 million. By the mid-[?]90s, the park's resources were badly strained. On a typical summer day, some 6,500 vehicles drove to the South Rim, only to find 2,400 parking places. Faced with gridlock, noise, and pollution from emissions during high season, the park planned major changes, designed to accommodate the 6.8 million annual visitors that the park, at that time, expected to receive in 2010. However, a decline in the number of tourists to the park following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and fuel price increases has left implementation of the General Management Plan uncertain.
Under the plan, private vehicles would eventually be barred from most areas along the South Rim, including the historic district in Grand Canyon Village, Hermits Road, and all but one overlook (Desert View) on the Desert View Drive. Instead of driving, visitors would travel by light rail from a new transportation staging area in Tusayan (just south of the park's south entrance) to a larger orientation center -- the Canyon View Information Plaza -- inside the park near Mather Point. A second light rail line would link the Canyon View Information Plaza with the Village Transit Center in Grand Canyon Village. At both the Canyon View Plaza and the Village Transit Center, visitors would be able to board shuttles that would transport them to other developed areas on the South Rim.
Private cars would not be banned altogether from this part of the park. Visitors camping or staying in lodges and campgrounds away from the rim would be allowed to drive directly to those areas. Those staying nearer the rim would be driven by van from parking areas farther out. Visitors would also be able to drive through the park on Highway 64, a through-road connecting the towns of Williams and Cameron, Arizona. However, they would not be allowed to park at the overlooks west of Desert View.
The plan also calls for an extensive "greenway" trail for cyclists, walkers, and equestrians, four miles of which have already opened. Paved in places, the plan is for the greenway to eventually cover 38 miles on the South Rim between Hermits Rest and Desert View. Another 8-mile branch of the greenway would link Tusayan with the Canyon View Information Plaza. An additional 28 miles may eventually be constructed on the North Rim.
In time, the new transit and trails system should help the National Park Service achieve its goal of restoring the rim areas to a quieter, less polluted state. Visitors hoping to learn in depth about the park would be able to do so in a cluster of historic buildings in Grand Canyon Village known as the Heritage Education Campus. Other parts of the General Management Plan move commercial activity and housing away from the rim and, in some cases, out of the park.
The park has been able to pay for some of the elements of the General Management Plan itself, using a percentage of the fees charged for admission and other park usage. But the most ambitious elements, including light rail service, require appropriations from Congress. The light rail plan alone would cost nearly as much as the entire construction budget for the Park Service. Congress may have lost an impetus for funding major improvements when visitation to Grand Canyon leveled off in the late 1990s and declined after September 11, 2001.
At present, visitors can ride the park's existing shuttle bus system around Grand Canyon Village, to all overlooks on Hermits Road, and to Yaki Point and Yavapai overlooks. Yet automobiles still strongly affect the visitor experience in most of the park's developed areas, at least in peak season. As long as most people still drive into the park, the visually stunning Canyon View Information Plaza will look strangely out of place. As a major element of the General Management Plan, the plaza was designed as a mass transit center and lacks automobile parking.
