Arches National Park Visitor Use, Access, and Experience Study - Final Report, November 2020

Resource Systems Group, Incorporated (RSG)

doi:10.36967/2306864

This report describes the results of the Arches National Park Visitor Use, Access, and Experience Study conducted from August 31 through October 31, 2019. This study was commissioned by the National Park Service (NPS) to help inform transportation planning and visitor use management at Arches National Park (ARCH). The specific purposes of the study are to: 1) collect descriptive information about vehicle traffic volumes, parking demand, trail use levels, and visitor densities at popular attraction sites; 2) estimate statistical relationships among transportation conditions, visitor use levels, and crowding at popular attraction sites; and 3) to conduct computer simulation modeling-based analyses of transportation and visitor use/access-related scenarios. The research conducted to achieve these study purposes and presented in this report involves several interrelated components, including: 1) automated and observation-based vehicle traffic volume and queue length counts; 2) GPS- and delay card-based tracking of parkwide and site-level visitor use patterns; 3) observation-based parking data collection; 4) automated trail use counts; 5) observation-based counts of the number of people-at-one-time (PAOT) and people-per-viewscape (PPV) at popular visitor attractions; and 6) statistical and simulation modeling of study data.