Monitoring visitor capacity for Acadia National Park carriage roads, 2014 and 2015

Jacobi, Charles

From executive summary: "Applying the new regression equation to July and August trail counter data in 2014 and 2015 showed that we did not violate the crowding standard of 3,000 carriage road visitors per day based on its 80% one-tailed confidence interval test. The same can be said for all other years back to 2006 when the Bicycle Express began delivering visitors to Eagle Lake in great numbers. During this period however, we exceeded an estimated 3,000 visitors per day on two days in August 2011, but neither met the 80% test. Before 2006, and using a different regression equation, we exceeded an estimated 3,000 visitors per day once in 2000, but this also failed to meet the 80% test. The daily use estimates from the new regression equation have shown that the increase in carriage road use since 2006 was less than previously reported but still statistically significant. All previous estimates of daily use since 2006 were reduced a modest but noticeable amount as we predicted in our 2013 report (Jacobi 2014). This suggests that as long as daily use from the Bicycle Express does not increase substantially from the current level, we may have reached a new plateau where the experience relative to crowding has diminished somewhat in quality around Eagle Lake (and perhaps further into the High Use Zone of the carriage road system) but the Low Use Zone experience remains relatively intact. Put in more concrete terms, on an average busy, sunny day in August between 9:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., the carriage roads have about 100 – 300 more visitors compared with 10 - 15 years ago, or about a 10% increase. On the positive side, user surveys in 2013 showed that we met the standards for the occurrence of four problem behaviors in spite of the increased use (Jacobi 2014). These surveys should be conducted again in 2017. Based on these behavior monitoring results, the park should continue to emphasize carriage road education annually and at every opportunity: - seasonal park staff should be trained about courtesy guidelines and communicate them to visitors at every opportunity; - local bike shops should be urged to continue their courtesy guidelines education for bike rental customers; - courtesy guidelines should be posted prominently in the park visitor center and other contact areas; - the presence of interpretation and visitor protection staff on the carriage roads should be continued at the highest level possible."

Monitoring visitor capacity for Acadia National Park carriage roads, 2014 and 2015

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