Editorial: Don’t push the poor out of our most popular national parks by doubling entry fees

Our national parks face two persistent problems: Chronic underfunding that has led to a nearly $12-billion backlog in deferred maintenance projects, and massive crowds during peak seasons at the most popular destinations. Congress created much of the backlog problem by failing to properly budget for upkeep, which it needs to address. But the parks also are victims of their own success — visitors to Yosemite National Park alone surged from 3.9 million in 2010 to 5 million last year.

The Trump administration wants to address both problems by raising the entry fee during the peak season at 17 of the most popular nature parks to $70 per vehicle, more than doubling the current fee (the rate would double for motorcycles and walk-ins as well). But such “surge pricing” effectively closes the door to certain lower-income families, to the advantage of wealthier ones. That is fundamentally unfair.

There are better ways of addressing overcrowding than pricing out lower-income families. To alleviate the press of cars, the government could bar private vehicles during peak seasons and ferry people around on shuttles (ideally, buses that do not emit greenhouse gases). It could limit the number of vehicles allowed and award entry passes by lottery to reduce the volume of visitors. Rangers recommended last summer that Zion National Park adopt a reservation system for entry, much as it and other parks already use for controlling access to campsites, though it doesn’t appear that the suggestion went anywhere. So there are other solutions.

The priorities here should be maintaining the parks (which Congress must fund), minimizing damage from overuse, and ensuring the parks are as accessible as possible to all without placing too high a financial burden on those who choose to visit them. The administration is right to recognize the maintenance backlog and overcrowding as problems, but it needs to go back to the drawing board for its solutions. The parks are a shared national treasure, and just as we should all be able to share equally in the benefits they bring, so too should we share the cost of maintaining them.

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