[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 68 (Thursday, May 8, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5964-S5965]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. SARBANES (for himself, Mr. Alexander, Mr. Akaka, Mr. 
        Baucus, Mr. Corzine, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Graham of Florida, Mr. 
        Kennedy, Mr. Lautenberg, Mr. Levin, Mr. Reid, Mr. Schumer, Ms. 
        Stabenow, and Mr. Wyden):
  S. 1032. A bill to provide for alternative transportation in certain 
federally owned or managed areas that are open to the general public; 
to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation 
similar to measures I have introduced in previous Congresses that will 
help protect our Nation's natural resources and improve the visitor 
experience in our national parks and other public lands. The Transit in 
Parks Act, or ``TRIP,'' establishes a new Federal transit grant 
initiative to support the development of alternative transportation 
services for our national parks, wildlife refuges, Federal recreational 
areas, and other public lands. I am pleased to be joined by Senators 
Akaka, Alexander, Baucus, Corzine, Dodd, Graham, Kennedy, Lautenberg, 
Levin, Reid, Schumer, Stabenow, and Wyden, who are cosponsors of this 
legislation.
  I want to underscore again today some of the principal arguments I 
have made in past years as to why this legislation is urgently needed. 
Memorial Day weekend, the opening of the summer travel season, is just 
weeks away. Millions of visitors will soon head to our national parks 
to enjoy the incredible natural heritage with which our Nation was 
endowed. But too many of them will spend hours looking for parking, or 
staring at the bumper of the car in front of them.
  Clearly, the world has changed significantly since the national parks 
first opened in the second half of the nineteenth century, when 
visitors arrived by stagecoach along dirt roads. At that time, travel 
through parklands, such as Yosemite or Yellowstone, was long, 
difficult, and costly. Not many people could afford or endure such a 
trip. The introduction of the automobile gave every American greater 
mobility and freedom, which included the freedom to travel and see some 
of our Nation's great natural wonders. Early in this century, landscape 
architects from the National Park Service and highway engineers from 
the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads collaborated to produce many feats of 
road engineering that opened the national park lands to millions of 
Americans.
  Yet greater mobility and easier access now threaten the very 
environments that the National Park Service is mandated to protect. The 
ongoing tension between preservation and access has always been a 
challenge for our national park system. Today, record numbers of 
visitors and cars have resulted in increasing damage to our parks. The 
Grand Canyon alone has almost five million visitors a year. As many as 
6,000 vehicles arrive in a single summer day. They compete for 2,400 
parking spaces. Between 32,000 and 35,000 tour buses go to the park 
each year. During the peak summer season, the entrance route becomes a 
giant parking lot.
  In 1975, the total number of visitors to America's national parks was 
190 million. By 2002, that number had risen to 277 million annual 
visitors--almost equal to one visit by every man, woman, and child in 
this country. This dramatic increase in visitation has created an 
overwhelming demand on these areas, resulting in severe traffic 
congestion, visitor restrictions, and in some instances vacationers 
being shut out of the parks altogether. The environmental damage at the 
Grand Canyon is visible at many other parks: Yosemite, which has more 
than four million visitors a year; Yellowstone, which has more than 
three million visitors a year and experiences such severe traffic 
congestion that access has to be restricted; Zion; Acadia; Bryce; and 
many others. We need to solve these problems now or risk permanent harm 
to our nation's natural, cultural, and historical heritage.
  Visitor access to the parks is vital not only to the parks 
themselves, but to the economic health of their gateway communities. 
For example, visitors to Yosemite infuse $3 billion a year into the 
local economy of the surrounding area. At Yellowstone, tourists spend 
$725 million annually in adjacent communities. Wildlife-related tourism 
generates an estimated $60 billion a year nationwide. If the parks are 
forced to close their gates to visitors due to congestion, the economic 
vitality of the surrounding region would be jeopardized.
  The challenge for park management has always been twofold: to 
conserve and protect the nation's natural, historical, and cultural 
resources, while at the same time ensuring visitor access and enjoyment 
of these sensitive environments. Until now, the principal 
transportation systems that the Federal Government has developed to 
provide access into our national parks are roads, primarily for private 
automobile access. The TRIP legislation recognizes that we need to do 
more than simply

[[Page S5965]]

build roads; we must invest in alternative transportation solutions 
before our national parks are damaged beyond repair.
  In developing solutions to the parks' transportation needs, this 
legislation builds upon the 1997 Memorandum of Understanding between 
Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater and Secretary of the Interior 
Bruce Babbitt, in which the two Departments agreed to work together to 
address transportation and resource management needs in and around 
national parks. The findings in the MOU are especially revealing: 
Congestion in and approaching many National Parks is causing lengthy 
traffic delays and backups that substantially detract from the visitor 
experience. Visitors find that many of the National Parks contain 
significant noise and air pollution, and traffic congestion similar to 
that found on the city streets they left behind.
  In many National Park units, the capacity of parking facilities at 
interpretive or scenic areas is well below demand. As a result, 
visitors park along roadsides, damaging park resources and subjecting 
people to hazardous safety conditions as they walk near busy roads to 
access visitor use areas.
  On occasion, National Park units must close their gates during high 
visitation periods and turn away the public because the existing 
infrastructure and transportation systems are at, or beyond, the 
capacity for which they were designed.
  In addition, the TRIP legislation is designed to implement the 
recommendations from a comprehensive study of alternative 
transportation needs in public lands that I was able to include in the 
Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, TEA-21, as section 
3039. The Federal Lands Alternative Transportation Systems Study 
confirmed what those of us who have visited our national parks already 
know: there is a significant and well-documented need for alternative 
transportation solutions in the national parks to prevent lasting 
damage to these incomparable natural treasures.
  The study examined over two hundred sites, and identified needs for 
alternative transportation services at two-thirds of those sites. The 
study found that implementation of such services can help achieve a 
number of desirable outcomes: ``Relieve traffic congestion and parking 
shortages; enhance visitor mobility and accessibility; preserve 
sensitive natural, cultural, and historic resources; provide improved 
interpretation, education and visitor information services; reduce 
pollution; and improve economic development opportunities for gateway 
communities.''
  In fact, the study concluded that ``the provision of transit in 
federally-managed lands can have national economic implications as well 
as significant economic benefits for local areas surrounding the 
sites.'' The study determined that funding transit needs would support 
thousands of jobs around the country, while also providing a direct 
benefit to the economy of gateway communities by ``expand[ing] the 
number of visits to the site and expand[ing] the amount of visitor 
spending in the surrounding communities.''
  The study identified ``lack of a dedicated funding source for 
developing, implementing, and operating and maintaining transit 
systems'' as a key barrier to implementation of alternative 
transportation in and around federally-managed lands. The Transit in 
Parks Act will go far toward helping parks and their gateway 
communities overcome this barrier. This new Federal transit grant 
program will provide funding to the Federal land management agencies 
that manage the 388 various sites within the National Park System, the 
National Wildlife Refuges, Federal recreational areas, and other public 
lands, including National Forest System lands, and to their State and 
local partners.
  The bill's objectives are to develop new and expanded transit 
services throughout the national parks and other public lands to 
conserve and protect fragile natural, cultural, and historical 
resources and wildlife habitats, to prevent or mitigate adverse impact 
on those resources and habitats, and to reduce pollution and 
congestion, while at the same time facilitating appropriate visitor 
access and improving the visitor experience. The program will provide 
capital funds for transit projects, including rail or clean fuel bus 
projects, joint development activities, pedestrian and bike paths, or 
park waterway access, within or adjacent to national parks and other 
public lands. The Secretary of Transportation may make funds available 
for operations as well. The bill authorizes $90 million for this new 
program for each of the fiscal years 2004 through 2009, consistent with 
the level of need identified in the study. It is anticipated that other 
resources--both public and private--will be available to augment these 
amounts.
  The bill formalizes the cooperative arrangement in the 1997 MOU 
between the Secretary of Transportation and the Secretary of the 
Interior to exchange technical assistance and to develop procedures 
relating to the planning, selection and funding of transit projects in 
national park lands. The bill further provides funds for planning, 
research, and technical assistance that can supplement other financial 
resources available to the Federal land management agencies. The 
projects eligible for funding would be developed through the 
transportation planning process and prioritized for funding by the 
Secretary of the Interior in consultation and cooperation with the 
Secretary of Transportation. It is anticipated that the Secretary of 
the Interior would select projects that are diverse in location and 
size. While major national parks such as the Grand Canyon or 
Yellowstone are clearly appropriate candidates for significant transit 
projects under this section, there are numerous small urban and rural 
Federal park lands that can benefit enormously from small projects, 
such as bike paths or improved connections with an urban or regional 
public transit system. No single project will receive more than 12 
percent of the total amount available in any given year. This ensures a 
diversity of projects selected for assistance.
  In addition, I firmly believe that this program will create new 
opportunities for the Federal land management agencies to partner with 
local transit agencies in gateway communities adjacent to the parks, 
both through the TEA-21 planning process and in developing integrated 
transportation systems. This will spur new economic development within 
these communities, as they develop transportation centers for park 
visitors to connect to transit links into the national parks and other 
public lands.
  The ongoing tension between preservation and access has always been a 
challenge for the National Park Service. Today, that challenge has new 
dimensions, with overcrowding, pollution, congestion, and resource 
degradation increasing at many of our national parks. This 
legislation--the Transit in Parks Act--will give our Federal land 
management agencies important new tools to improve both preservation 
and access. Just as we have found in metropolitan areas, transit is 
essential to moving large numbers of people in our national parks--
quickly, efficiently, at low cost, and without adverse impact. At the 
same time, transit can enhance the economic development potential of 
our gateway communities.
  As we begin a new millennium, I cannot think of a more worthy 
endeavor to help our environment and preserve our national parks, 
wildlife refuges, and Federal recreational areas than by encouraging 
alternative transportation in these areas. My bill is strongly 
supported by the National Parks Conservation Association, Environmental 
Defense, the American Public Transportation Association, Community 
Transportation Association, Amalgamated Transit Union, Surface 
Transportation Policy Project, Natural Resources Defense Council, 
Friends of the Earth, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, America Bikes and 
others, and I ask unanimous consent that the bill, a section-by-section 
analysis, and letters of support be printed in the Record, along with 
the USA Today article, ``Save Parks: Park Cars.''
  I believe that we have a clear choice before us: we can turn paradise 
into a parking lot--or we can invest in alternatives. I urge my 
colleagues to support the Transit in Parks Act to ensure that our 
Nation's natural treasures will be preserved for many generations to 
come.
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