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The
Outdoor Network
- September 30, 2002
By Win Gilliland, Staff
Writer
Following a recent study
which found that many of the country’s most visited National Parks
suffer from high levels of air pollution (The Outdoor Network, September
26th), authorities at Yellowstone National Park in Montana have announced
that the park will introduce a mass-transit system to help curb the ever
increasing number of private vehicles which clog roadways and contribute
to air and noise pollution within the park.
The park has not made use of
mass-transit since the 1950’s when the last of the classic yellow tour
buses were retired. Recently however, the park purchased a small fleet of
the original vehicles, which will be renovated and used to shuttle
visitors to and from the parks most popular and congested areas.
Yellowstone, the country’s
oldest National Park, sees approximately three million visitors a year. As
environmentalists see it, if even a small percentage of these visitors
used public transportation as an alternative to private vehicles, the
reduction in traffic and pollution would be significant. "We're
adding several million people to our country's population each year and
we're not making any more Yellowstones," said environmentalist Jon
Catton, a spokesperson for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.
Yellowstone is not the first
park in the country to utilize mass transit. Rocky Mountain National Park
in Colorado has utilized buses since 1978. At Rocky Mountain, nearly
265,000 made use of the park’s free buses, which can transport up to 60
passengers and have amenities such as air conditioning, large viewing
windows and handicap access.
Copyright © 2002 The
Outdoor Network
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