Transit aid set aside for U.S. parks Maine gets $1.4M for propane buses

PENINSULA, Ohio – Federal officials awarded 42 grants Monday totaling almost $20 million to reduce traffic in America’s national parks and public lands by providing alternative transit including trains, shuttle buses and bicycle trails.

The goal of the Alternative Transportation in the Parks and Public Lands program is to reduce pollution and congestion and preserve parklands and wildlife areas while increasing access for visitors, including the disabled.

The grants were announced inside the scenic 33,000-acre Cuyahoga Valley National Park by Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett and Federal Transit Administrator James Simpson. The officials climbed aboard the park’s historic train for a tour after the announcement, which included $898,000 in grants for upgrades to the rail.

The biggest of the grants included $4.7 million to buy rail cars for the Chugach National Forest in Alaska, $1.7 million to buy four buses for Colorado’s White River National Forest, $1.4 million for propane-powered buses for Maine’s Acadia National Park and $1.2 million for a replacement boat dock at Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska.

Other projects include two park-and-ride lots at California’s Yosemite National Park, a traffic study at the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and replacements for three trailers for visitor trams at the Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts.

“The idea is to ensure high levels of visitation but to prevent that gridlock and provide alternatives to the automobile driving around the parks,” Scarlett said during an outdoor news conference in a light rain.

The various inaugural grants in the four-year program “will have a nationwide impact,” said U.S. Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, who co-sponsored the original legislation creating the Cuyahoga Valley park, Ohio’s only national park.

Scarlett and Simpson said the grants eventually will total $97 million by 2009.

“More visitors enjoy our parks and public lands each year, and this program provides an additional tool to help enhance the visitor experience,” Scarlett said.

The Cuyahoga Valley park, located between Cleveland and Akron, drew more than 2.5 million visitors last year.

The nonprofit Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad connects the park to Akron and Canton to the south. The park hopes to extend the excursion line north to Cleveland to connect with the city’s bus and commuter rail lines.

Park Superintendent John Debo said a Canton-to-Cleveland line would allow park visitors to travel by rail to tourist destinations along the line, including Cleveland’s Lake Erie waterfront.