Why cars still clog all routes to the rim

Grand Canyon National Park, Ariz. —  ANOTHER SUMMER SUNSET AT THE BIG DITCH. HUNDREDS of us have gathered at Mather Point, one of the South Rim’s prime viewpoints, although I’m the only one in sight who’s traveling on two unmotorized wheels.

I steer my rented mountain bike past the creeping traffic -- entering the park in these peak weeks often means sitting through a 30-minute traffic jam at the gates -- then lean the bike against a fence, step to the lip. The awesome view lies before us, a thousand dusty reds and pinks, each deepening by the moment. And then a guy to my left turns to his late- arriving friend and says what everyone seems to be thinking.

“Hey, brudda! Got a parking spot, huh?”

This summer was supposed to be different. After a long epoch of growing automotive domination, a new light-rail system was supposed to roll out this year, centerpiece of a scheme that would fill the park’s byways with pedestrians, cyclists and riders of trains and buses. But that train ain’t coming, and I had to drag this bike 75 miles from a shop in Flagstaff.

Just look at all the cars lined up alongside the road. The Park Service’s free shuttle buses may carry visitors daily along three rim-adjacent routes, from which visitors’ cars are mostly banned, but we have no winners yet in the battle to make this territory more park and less parking lot.

I blame us, the 4 million auto-dependent people a year who use the place, and the other us: the taxpayers who underwrite it and are apparently unwilling to invest in a dramatic change.

Not that it’s all hell for a cyclist. Though banned from hiking trails and all other off-road zones, bikes are welcome on any paved or unpaved road in the park. The superintendent, Joe Alston, has said he might consider allowing bikes onto some of the panoramic rim trails now reserved for pedestrians. And many park workers commute on two wheels.

I glimpse one or two of them as I pedal a couple of miles from Grand Canyon Village to the Canyon View Information Plaza, looking in vain for signs to clarify what’s part of the park’s bike-friendly “greenway” and what isn’t. The 2-year-old plaza impresses visitors (who approach by foot and bus) with its handsome and educational displays. But as the park newsletter notes, it “was designed as the terminus for a mass transit system that is not yet in operation.” The spot on the display that once said “greenway” has been amended, in recognition of uncompleted miles, to say “proposed greenway.”

I glide over to the panel devoted to cycling and read that the facility’s future includes a bike rental shop -- but its present does not.

Is there a future in this place for a man on a bike?

Yes, says Alston, the superintendent. So does Deborah Tuck, president of the Flagstaff-based Grand Canyon National Park Foundation, a nonprofit group that specializes in fundraising for trails. But it’s complicated.

In the late 1990s, after years of debate, the feds agreed on a long-term plan: have people park farther from the rim and build a light-rail system to bring them in, at a cost of something like $170 million. Meanwhile, the Park Service and the foundation would together raise money and build a $31-million “greenway” -- more than 70 miles of trails on the South and North rims for walkers, bicyclists, wheelchair users and a few bits for equestrians.

But then, in 2000, came the big detour. Look, said Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Appropriations Interior Subcommittee, this is too bold and costly for a park whose visitor figures have gone nearly flat. So, just a few days after Alston arrived as superintendent, Regula’s subcommittee gathered at the park and pulled the plug on the light-rail plan.

The bit about visitors is true; from 1994 to 1999, visitor numbers climbed less than 1% per year, and the numbers have since slumped further. But let me tell you, outdoorists, it’s a uniquely educational moment to stand amid these fumes and idling engines and consider that, by the reckoning of Congress, this place and its parking lots just aren’t crowded enough.

(It’s also true, although Alston never volunteered it, that any plan for change probably will stir opposition in neighboring towns like Tusuyan, Williams and Flagstaff, where the economies hinge on existing driving and lodging habits. The air and population may be thin, but the politics are thick.)

“In fact, I think it was a pretty wise decision to look at alternatives,” Alston says. “In retrospect, I understand it.”

Four years later, however, park system pooh-bahs and other federal authorities are still looking. More buses? Maybe a faster set of rolling stock on the historical Grand Canyon Railway that runs between Williams and Grand Canyon Village?

Meanwhile, the Canyon View Information Plaza (completed just before the big detour) receives buses, pedestrians and bikes, and the greenway plan inches toward the 10-mile mark, mostly reliant on private-sector gifts. On the South Rim, a two-mile trail connects the Canyon View Information Plaza to Grand Canyon Village, where most of the lodgings and restaurants are. Another two-mile trail along the rim connects Yavapai Point to Pipe Creek Vista on Desert View Drive, although that one’s not for bikes.

Work began last year on a 7.5-mile route connecting the plaza to Tusuyan, a 2.4-mile North Rim trail starts in October, and plans are advancing for an eight-mile route from Grand Canyon Village to Hermits Rest to the west.

Everything else is further off. And the completed greenway miles aren’t always easy to spot. “It is confusing, and we recognize that,” Alston acknowledged. Still, by 2009, Tuck says, “there’s going to be a feast of opportunities for biking.” And if, she muses, the foundation lands the park bike-shop concession, it can pump the revenue in trails.

Let’s hope so. It’s no stroll in the park, dodging the four-wheeled traffic in this insufficiently busy public resource.

To e-mail Christopher Reynolds or to read his previous Wild West columns, go to latimes.com/chrisreynolds.