|
The issue of rapidly escalating National Park Service fees has recently begun to get consider media attention.
What people have forgotten, is that less than a decade ago the big problem for the National Parks was that "people are loving them to death", or so we were told. People have forgotten that the SOLUTION proposed for the problem of over-use was to end what the fee-supporting folks at the Property and Environment Research Center called "welfare recreation" ---i.e., low cost opportunities for American taxpayers to enjoy recreation on their publicly funded public lands. The solution was to increase the price of a visit to the National Parks and other public lands sufficiently to drive people away. More particularly, the solution was to drive away the marginal income segment of the market and thus provide an improved experience for those wealthy enough to be unaffected by increased fees.
Today the BIG PR spin coming from the NPS, Department of Interior and recreation industry is the need to attract "less represented populations" to the parks. The segment of the population targeted by this campaign is most likely comprised of people in the mid- to lower income brackets... i.e., the very people who are most likely to be dissuaded from using public lands because of new and higher fees.
PERC and others said that higher fees would reduce visitation. Fees were increased and visitation fell. The concepts espoused by PERC and the American Recreation Coalition, which has long been a supporter of "differential pricing", worked. Yesterday's hot-button problem of loving our parks to death has been solved. Free-Market Economics drove visitors away, as any thinking person knew they would!
Today the PR message that is on everyone's tongue focuses upon trying to increase visitation by a wider segment of the public -- a segment likely to poorer and thus more heavily impacted by steep entrance fees. How are these mid- and lower income folks going to be attracted to the parks if higher fees have been keeping them away??? The answer is frightening! It's what I've been saying all along.
The plan is to DISNEYFY the parks and make them more commercial, more alluring and more fun. The plan is to privately fund the construction and operation of new and high-profile recreation attractions and then aggressively market the parks and their new attractions.
If allowed to happen, this would be the one-two knockout combination for the parks long sought by the free-market ideologues and recreation industry buccaneers.
PERC's SOLUTION was fully documented by PERC researcher J. Bishop Grewell in a 2002 article titled "All Play and No Play: The Adverse Effect of Welfare Recreation" from 2002. Grewell's paper unabashedly explains the concept of pricing people out of the parks with higher fees.
Pasted below are two short sections from this comprehensive treatise. The full and original paper can be read at the link provided.
Scott
-- begin quoted excerpts ---
Chapter 9
All Play and No Pay:
The Adverse Effects of Welfare Recreation
J. Bishop Grewell
"Our national parks are being overused, over-loved.
They're being loved to death." (Hebert 1999)
-Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.)
What Is Welfare Recreation? How Does It Cause Harm?
In a competitive market free of government interference, the amount of
recreation provided is determined by the interaction of buyers and
sellers freely determining how much they will consume and produce. In
the long run, there is neither a shortage nor an oversupply of
recreation. If there is a shortage, the price will rise, encouraging a
greater supply of recreational services. If too many recreational
services are provided, the price will fall, encouraging a smaller
supply. When the federal government enters the game, however, the
corrective forces of the market are impeded. Price signals no longer
convey the amount of recreation that consumers are willing to pay
producers.
This situation is possible because the federal government does not need
to consider the full costs of providing too much or too little of a
good or service. Because activities are largely financed out of taxes,
it can charge less than the cost of providing a service, and keep
operating. In the case of recreation on federal lands, we have what
might be called "welfare recreation," because the government often
charges substantially less than would be charged in the marketplace.2
Under this scenario, site managers have no way of telling how much
recreation should be produced, because government-distorted prices do
not reflect consumer demands. In addition, with prices set far below
market prices, the quantity of recreation demanded escalates. In short,
the incentives created by welfare recreation intensify recreational
pressures on federal lands.
These pressures manifest themselves in different ways, such as multiple
visits beyond what a recreationist would have made at the market price
and visits from people who would not visit otherwise. Such pressures
increase the likelihood of damage to the environment. In the case of
national parks, assets worth hundreds of billions of dollars-including
infrastructure like roads, visitor centers, and sewage systems as well
as natural resource assets such as wildlife, habitat, and water and air
quality-suffer from abuse and overuse. Anderson and Leal (1991, 76) sum
up the harms from welfare recreation on federal lands this way: "Zero
or token fees result in crowding, abuse of resources, and reduced
incentives for the private sector to provide similar activities. The
move to higher recreational user fees eliminates fiscal problems caused
by subsidized recreation. . . ."
Another major problem that stems from welfare recreation is the failure
to link costs with revenues. Just raising the price of recreation will
not solve all the problems. For much of the twentieth century, most of
the proceeds from user fees have gone to the federal treasury instead
of the facility or agency collecting the fees. This leaves managers
with little discretionary funds for site upkeep and recreational
provision. Instead they must turn to politicians to supply the funds.
Since politicians control the purse strings, they decide which projects
are funded and which are not. As discussed later, the pet projects of
politicians often take priority over resource protection and facility
upkeep....
Congestion: People, Cars, and Congestion Pricing
Many of the problems from welfare recreation boil down to one thing:
congestion (too many people in one area at one time). In 1999 game
wardens from Tanzania visited Yellowstone National Park. "Too many
people. Too many vehicles," commented one warden. Another said, "It's
like a city. How can a tourist enjoy with so many vehicles around?"
(McMillion 1999b). Anderson and Leal (1991, 62) write, "As with any
good, low or zero fees for federally controlled resources increase the
demand and result in overcrowding and diminished quality." Problems
from overcrowding result in reduced quality of a visit to a desirable
locale and reduced environmental quality.
On the convenience side, roads are run down in the parks. Some of the
most traveled roads in Yellowstone have not had major improvements in
nearly sixty-five years. Potholes along these routes have gotten bad
enough to break car axles (Janofsky 1999). In 1998 Yellowstone's
Dunraven Pass was in such poor shape that it was closed to traffic
until it could be repaved. High concentrations of visitors lead to
traffic jams, and idling cars increase pollution emissions. On summer
evenings at the Yavapai Point overlook in the Grand Canyon National
Park, the parking lot is regularly full, leaving many visitors to drive
away in frustration (T. Watson 1999). Too many visitors using the
facilities at one time is also a large reason for overflowing sewage
systems. Built for a lower capacity, they cannot process sewage fast
enough to keep up with the crowds.
Congestion was addressed in a 1999 General Accounting Office (GAO)
report analyzing the success of the fee demonstration program. The
report suggested that the Park Service needed to experiment more with
different pricing structures based on use. According to the report, The
Park Service has done little to experiment with different pricing
structures. Visitors generally pay the same fee whether they are
visiting during a peak period (such as a weekend in the summer) or an
off-peak period (such as midweek during the winter) or whether they are
staying for several hours or several days. A more innovative fee system
would make fees more equitable for visitors and might change visitation
patterns somewhat to enhance economic efficiency and reduce
overcrowding and its effects on parks' resources. Furthermore,
according to the four agencies, reducing visitation during peak periods
can lower the costs of operating recreation sites by reducing (1) the
staff needed to operate a site, (2) the size of facilities, (3) the
need for maintenance and future capital investments and (4) the extent
of damage to a site's resources. (GAO 1999, 4) Some argue that
recreational use does not commit the egregious harms that traditional
commodity extraction does because it does not extract a resource.
Congestion illustrates the flaw in this thinking. One reason that
recreationists visit areas of natural beauty is to get away from
civilization. Recreational users extract a resource by taking up a
given space at a specific time. The difference between four people in a
meadow and forty affects a visitor's enjoyment of nature.
The problem of too few parking spaces in the Grand Canyon viewing area
is a prime example of a valuable space resource being allocated by
first-come, first-served with no restriction on length of stay. Long
lines and scenic views filled with not-so-scenic crowds of people
lessen the outdoors experience for everyone. Despite the GAO's
acknowledgment of the benefits of congestion pricing-which would bring
the price charged more in line with the actual cost of recreating-the
NPS is instead looking at expensive tram systems for Yosemite and the
Grand Canyon as well as direct rationing, in which reservations are
required to use parts of the park system.
Plans to reduce the crowding at Yosemite have been under consideration
since the General Management Plan began in 1980. According to the
National Park Service's original report, "Increasing automobile traffic
is the single greatest threat to enjoyment of the natural and
scenic qualities of Yosemite" (NPS 1980). Four million people now visit
the park annually, double the number in 1980. Under the preferred
alternative for the Final Yosemite Valley Plan (the primary planning
document for carrying out the goals of the General Management Plan),
the following solutions were proposed to handle congestion: Overnight
accommodations will be reduced by approximately 16 percent (that
includes a 5 percent increase in camping units); day-use parking spaces
in the Yosemite Valley will be reduced by about 65 percent, leaving
only 550 spaces at Yosemite Village; and shuttles, biking, and hiking
will provide transportation in the park (NPS 2000, 2-259 through
2-273). Eventually the planners hope to create a transit system to
allow for complete removal of all private vehicles from the valley. In
addition, restricting the numbers of visitors per day through a
reservation system was considered (NPS 1980).
A simpler and less expensive plan to the problem of intensive use would
be congestion pricing-not currently one of the options under the
Yosemite Valley Plan. Congestion pricing is the reason movie matinees
are cheaper than evening shows, telephone calls are less expensive on
weekends, hotels have different rates during winter and summer, and
airline tickets are priced differently for different days and times of
the year. By raising the price at peak hours when their service is in
its highest demand, companies reduce the traffic and give greater
priority to those with greater demand. Congestion pricing affords
everyone the option to visit Yosemite. Those who place a lower value on
their trip to Yosemite can postpone their visit to the off-peak season
and pay less. By applying a congestion pricing scheme, Yosemite would
raise more funding, cut down on congestion, and allow visiting
travelers the freedom to drive through the park. At the same time, the
extra funds could be put back into enhancing the park by improving
wildlife management and hiking trails instead of spending federal tax
dollars on building an expensive transportation system that will
benefit a fraction of the taxpayers forced to contribute to it.
Overcrowding of national parks, forests, rivers, and other recreational
areas harms the environment. It leads to degradation of the wilderness,
its environmental amenities, and the recreational experience by
stretching the resources beyond their capacity. Yosemite even suffers
from overcrowding and environmental damage due to underpricing the
right to climb the worldclass rock, El Capitan. Rock climber Peter
Anderson observes that raw human waste and a high density of climbers
have degraded the famous landmark.4 Congestion pricing could go a long
way to ending these problems.
According to the NPS, "During peak visitation periods the noise, smell,
glare, and congestion associated with motor vehicles can overwhelm the
resource-related visitor experience" (NPS 2000, 1-11). Increased
traffic is harmful to wildlife crossing the roadways. Gridlock caused
by too many visitors in one place leads to stop-and-go traffic and
idling engines, both of which produce air pollution. But like the
problems of inconvenience, these environmental harms could be handled
by using price structures that reflect the varying demands of park use.
|
- Privatization 
