This is a rant about the park shuttle. I decided to put this in a separate section so that those that don't care to listen to me rant can skip this section and go back to the main blog.

The park has recently begun to offer a free shuttle service to take visitors to many of the main attractions along the Going-to-the-Sun Road. This is a great idea. It not only saves me the $50 in fuel it would take to drive this road and back. It also relieves me of trying to find a parking space at the parking lot at Logan Pass and other popular stops along the way. But a combination of bad management and bad luck has created a bunch of angry (ex-)shuttle passengers. Carol and I are just two of them.

The problems started when 3 new shuttles and a couple of older ones broke down. This could be part of a larger maintenance management problem but I can't say for sure. But the working shuttles had to be shifted around and this caused delays. Instead of the usual 15-30 minutes between shuttles, it became an hour or more. And when a shuttle did arrive at a stop, it was often full and could not pick up any more passengers. Those that had been waiting for an hour or more were forced to wait even longer for the next shuttle. Boy, were they ticked off! And when the shuttles were finally loaded, they sat there for what seemed like forever (actually 5 or 10 minutes) and added fuel to an already raging fire. When we arrived at the eastern terminus at Saint Mary, the shuttle sat idle and empty for 30 minutes while a driver exchange took place. With the kinds of problems they were having, shuttle management should have avoided scenes like that. If nothing else, it added to the public relations disaster.

Passengers began to accumulate at key locations faster than the shuttles could take them away. Before we could leave Logan Pass, we watched 3 shuttles arrive and board passengers that had arrived prior to us. We finally boarded the fourth shuttle at Logan Pass after waiting over an hour. These shuttles were supposed to take us back to West Glacier, but half-way there, we had to disembark and wait for another shuttle. We arrived back at our campground about 3 hours later than we would have if the shuttle service had performed as expected.

When the shuttle arrived at the campground, it continued by without stopping. I called out to the driver and she said that the shuttles don't stop at the campground in the evening - only in the morning. When we arrived at the next stop, I showed the driver the shuttle schedule and the list of stops and pointed out that no distinction was made for the campground stop - it, like all others, was listed as a scheduled stop for each run. Her reply was, "Oh, I've never looked at those schedules - I just drive the bus." That statement, more than anything, defined the problems that plague this shuttle service.

The original goal of the shuttle service was to help the environment and relieve traffic congestion within the park by getting people to park their cars and ride the shuttle. This has worked great at places like Zion National Park. But if I go back to Glacier anytime soon, I won't be getting on the shuttle.