Thousands of people are expected to arrive at Muir Woods on the Fourth of July, park and enjoy the cool, fresh air of the national monument.
It will be crowded.
The National Park Service is warning on its website: “Heavy Traffic and Limited Parking at Muir Woods: Expect parking to fill very early (before 9 a.m.) with major road delays… Consider taking the Muir Woods Shuttle (marintransit.org) to minimize congestion and wait times.”
Not exactly a walk in the park for visitors.
But by this time next year the parking experience at the park will have undergone a major transformation, and park officials hope visits to Muir Woods will be less hectic and pressure eased on roads outside the park.
The National Park Service is in the process of implementing a reservation system to manage cars at the monument and plans to begin operating it in January.
The park service recently announced it has received environmental approval for a second prong of work dubbed the “Muir Woods Sustainable Access Project.”
“A visit to Muir Woods should be about the peace of the redwoods, not a battle for parking,” said Cicely Muldoon, acting superintendent of Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
The project will reorganize parking areas, address traffic flow and redesign the visitor entry plaza with the goal of improving safety, along with better protecting park resources.
The entry plaza will be redesigned to provide a better passenger zone, while eliminating all parking near the entrance with the exception of those with disabled placards. The existing 232-space lot designed in the 1960s will be modified to allow for better walking access to the front gate. Visitors now encounter a lack of pedestrian walkways in areas frequented by tour buses, shuttles and cars as they make their way across the parking lot, according to the park service.
A former nursery area and maintenance yard will be converted into a small parking area, with the goal of removing all roadside parking from Muir Woods Road also known as Frank Valley Road, something locals have been calling for. The move would improve safety by getting people off the road, and protect riparian habitat by moving cars away from Redwood Creek.
“This project is key to achieving our Redwood Creek Watershed vision for the future,” Muldoon said.
The second project is set to begin next June and be completed in December 2020 as crews must shut down operations at certain times of the year to protect species.
The first step in the attempt to solve the parking and traffic issues is the reservation system.
Officials say a parking reservation system for Muir Woods is also a step toward controlling crowds. Visitors initially will pay $8 to park, with the fee rising to $10 over 10 years.
Presently, parking at Muir Woods is free and provided on a first-come, first-served basis. Free for decades until 1997 when a $2 entry fee was imposed, Muir Woods visitors 16 and older now pay $10 to get in. The parking fee will be on top of those charges.
With the reservation system in place, annual visitation is expected to be reduced from about 1.1 million to 924,000.
A reservation system, which would be operated by a concessionaire under a 10-year contract beginning Nov. 1, would allow the park to meter the number of visitors in advance of their arrival. The park service’s ferry to Alcatraz operates similarly, with visitors purchasing tickets in advance for a specific time. The system is expected to operate 365 days a year.
Kristin Shannon, head of the Mount Tam Task Force, had some reservations about the system.
“Sure, the reservation system will improve things but only for some visitors; they will have a secure place to park and that’s all good. But what happens to the rest of the folks who didn’t reserve weeks in advance? The reservation system is not a panacea,” she said.
Shannon worries those without a reservation will park illegally along Frank Valley Road.
“If there is no enforcement, those who don’t reserve will still come, and hunt for parking next to the salmon stream, posted or not, safe or not,” she said. “If you come and park illegally the odds are you won’t get a ticket.”
