Editorial: Shuttles restore quiet

Monday, July 3, 2000 | 8:44 a.m.

Four years ago President Clinton ordered a plan to improve transportation in our national parks. As more and more Americans have sought to escape the urban areas on weekends or during vacations, our national parks became even more crowded. Ironically, these visits to parks are starting to resemble our gridlocked urban landscape that everyone was seeking to get away from in the first place.

Four national parks were selected to develop pilot projects in which access by private vehicles would be limited, replaced instead by free bus shuttles. Zion National Park in Utah, which is a popular destination for Las Vegans, is the first national park to have its shuttle running. And as the Sun's Susan Snyder reported June 25 in a story about Zion's shuttle, the early indications are that it is a success, restoring a measure of tranquillity to the park. "This is the way it was supposed to be," hiker Barbara Pavlick told Snyder.

Indeed, Bureau of Land Management officials in Las Vegas already are talking about whether a similar shuttle could be used at the popular Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. There currently are just 284 parking spaces along Red Rock's 13-mile paved road, yet on weekends there can be as many as 2,000 cars a day using the looped road. And with residential development inching ever closer to Red Rock Canyon, and a new leg of the beltway getting closer to completion, it means that even more visitors will use this area as a respite.

Setting up a similar shuttle at Red Rock will be difficult considering that currently there isn't the same kind of land available for parking as is the case with Zion. But that shouldn't stop BLM officials from looking at other ways this can be done. We've all seen how a lack of planning has led to congestion on our roadways, so it's critical that the BLM immediately follow through on how a shuttle could be deployed at Red Rock so that we can continue to enjoy what truly is a breathtaking -- and often needed -- escape from urban Las Vegas.