Data shows low ridership during 2022 season
By Gwendolyn Craig
The second year of a free hiker shuttle on state Route 73 through the Adirondacks’ eastern High Peaks did not transport as many hikers as some would have liked. The state and its partners are evaluating what to do about the service this upcoming hiking season.
The shuttle system is a joint venture between the state Department of Environmental Conservation and Essex County, and operated on the weekends, dropping people off at various trailheads from Marcy Field to Chapel Pond. The route expanded last year to include the Frontier Town Gateway in North Hudson. A total of 214 people used the shuttle from its opening on July 16 to closing on Oct. 10, 2022, according to the DEC.
The Town of Keene has operated its own shuttle for years. Riders paid $10, but last year the state gave the town funding, and the town eliminated the fee. Town Supervisor Joe Pete Wilson said the bus ferried a total of 1,625 riders in 2022, including 210 on Labor Day weekend, the most.
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Shaun Gillilland, chairman of the Essex County Board of Supervisors, said efforts to attract hikers to the shuttles weren’t enough. He suspects American and Canadian hikers want to park their vehicles and go, rather than take a shuttle.
“We just weren’t getting the juice from the squeeze,” he said.
Fall foliage shuttles
The DEC also launched a fall foliage shuttle last year, which ran Oct. 1, 2, 8, 9 and 10. The free ride drove visitors from the Frontier Town Gateway to Marcy Field. The DEC said 47 people used that bus.
The DEC said it will be evaluating the first two years of the shuttle program with the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism (ROOST), Town of Keene and Essex County.
Gillilland declined to say whether he was in favor of ending the shuttle program or not, but added he thinks there was enough marketing of the bus service.
Jane Hooper, communications manager for ROOST, said, “As with any new service it can take some time to become well-established.” She believes hikers will eventually get in the habit of using the shuttles.
“We don’t want to run buses up and down the road, increasing traffic congestion, pumping more diesel fumes and aging,” Gillilland said.
Pete Nelson, co-founder of Adirondack Wilderness Advocates, also noted the shuttles’ emissions. He’d like to see the state electrify the High Peaks fleet. Nelson was also a member of the High Peaks Strategic Planning Advisory Group, a state-appointed committee charged with brainstorming management ideas to address concerns about a growing number of visitors. In its final report, the group recommended a shuttle system, among many other strategies.
“It has to be structured so that it’s a more essential part of the Route 73 infrastructure,” Nelson said. “It’s great that they did the pilot, but I’m aware that the numbers didn’t get there.”
The DEC said, “partners will review the data collected to help determine what is necessary to enhance safety along Route 73 and provide equitable public access to area trails while effectively protecting the natural resources of the High Peaks region in furtherance of the recommendations outlined in the High Peaks Advisory Group report.”
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I would take the shuttle but in the summer, sometimes I want to be at the trailhead by 5 a.m. Then, I may not be back until evening. So, the shuttles availability is why I do not take it.
It’s time to let this bus die (town shuttle is fine). The massive costs put into this comes out to hundreds of dollars per individual rider! This is much better utilized doing trail maintenance and building proper trailhead parking lots.
It is okay if some parking lots fill up on the busiest of fall weekends…no need to bus people in. Build the right-sized lots for the other 355 days per year and call it good.
Maybe if the shuttle bus dropped off and picked up at the AMR trailhead to provide an alternative when their “parking reservation system” (that is assuredly not a permit system to restrict access) is full.
Maybe build some better parking lots and also stop kowtowing to the AMR?
Why don’t any “authors” ask these questions?
The main problem with the Rt. 73 shuttle is that it only services one parking lot (Roaring Brook) that actually frequently fills up. And Giant can also be accessed from the Ridge Trail parking that can, in reality, expand along the highway as much as is needed. The Rooster Comb parking occasionally fills up, but then there is parking in towards town. For most hikers, even a half-mile roadside walk is preferable to being tied to the schedule of a shuttle. And the Rt. 73 shuttle is not very fast, given that it must go all the way to the Rt. 9 junction, turn down toward Elizabethtown another half-mile or so, and then finally return to drop off hikers at the Ridge and Roaring Brook trailheads.
So, unless, a) DOT can be persuaded to post Rt. 73 for parking well past the Round Pond trailhead parking (and actually be able to enforce that ban), and b) the Town of Keene figures out how to ban all-day parking along the highway in the Hamlet of Keene Valley (and actually enforce this ban without hurting local businesses), then this shuttle has no practical use.
Increased parking at certain trailheads would probably be the best solution. Yes, shuttles have worked in Franconia Notch in New Hampshire, but the geography for those shuttles is much different than here, i.e. many popular trailheads within a few miles of good parking = short shuttles and frequent service.
I think a bigger draw would be for the hiking shuttle to make more stops than it does now. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t choose the shuttle this year – it just wasn’t going to where I was.
The shuttle experiment, although reasonable, is again attempting to put a band-aid on major underlying systemic disease. The root of the problem isn’t parking lot sizes, easements, or even increased usage of HPW trails. The problem is a trail INFRASTRUCTURE that is totally incompatible with modern trail routing and hardening to allow sustainable, increasing future usage. There was virtually no planning or design involved with the majority of HPW trails, and it shows.
Many trailheads were located at what was little more than an old stagecoach road pull-out, allowing short but steep approaches to peaks. Parking was not an issue, mostly requiring a place to tie your horses. Guides cut the trails to provide relatively short, easy hiking along with some nice views. Sustainability was not a buzzword back then. But those old guides got a lot wrong. They didn’t have much access to engineers.
So many, if not most of the parking areas are but one symptom of this underlying infirmity. Take a slow drive someday up these old stagecoach roads. The roads themselves are poorly located due to the extreme terrain they need to negotiate. River gorges or lakes on one side with steep slopes on the other are not conducive to large parking areas. “Just make them bigger” simply isn’t an option at many trailheads approaching 200 years old – while these small trailheads continue to service old, unsustainable trails. Hardening problem areas on some trails is another band-aid that encourages more feet using these poorly-routed trails.
DEC, APA, legislators, hikers, localities, and other stakeholders need to take a step back and determine if we are throwing good money after bad. Is there ANY talk of redesigning the entire HPW trail system to afford better access and sustainable trail routing and construction? Politicians get votes from large building projects, not band-aid maintenance projects. Where do our elected representatives stand on this matter? Are they even AWARE of it?? Are they working with DEC/APA to come up with at least the start of a Grand Plan to upgrade the trail and parking infrastructure in the HPW? All I hear are crickets. Instead, it seems to be the old corollary of “squeaky wheel gets the grease”. No one seems to have any ability to envision, develop, and implement large-scale and long-scale planning any more. Perhaps it IS impossible for people to work together anymore, but in my opinion it is at least worth a try. But shuttling more hikers to poorly-designed trail systems to enable even more foot traffic over those sick trails does not seem to me like a prudent approach – since at its core, it is ignoring the underlying disease. We need to be electing and appointing visionaries, not band-aid dispensers.
100% Boreas – these are some excellent points.
Well said Boreas!
Hello? Covid19? Remember? I was infected on a shuttle bus WITH WINDOWS THAT DO NOT OPEN ! Do these busses have openable windows ? Does the marketing campaign specify that the busses have clean air inside ? How On Earth is this not obvious ?
Almost makes you want to walk…
I agree totally Stuart ! Also, the main reason ridership is down is that during the pandemic everyone was looking for an outdoor activity to have something to do since we were all cooped up, and many businesses closed up. There are just a lot fewer people coming now that their lives have returned to normal.
Stuart is correct – i worried about getting and giving