Park It . . . Then Park It

"If you look to the left, you'll see the west temple, the highest peak in Zion," intones the driver as we make our way down the lane at a stately 21 mph. "The three peaks coming into view on your left are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the famous Court of the Patriarchs.

"Next stop, Court of the Patriarchs. Please collect your personal belongings."

We are commuters into the wild. The schematic route map on the wall of the bus reads like an outdoors version of the Orange Line: Canyon Junction, Court of the Patriarchs, Zion Lodge, the Grotto, Weeping Rock, Big Bend. Instead of a "Got Milk" ad, there's a natural history poster: "If perched in the middle of this bus, the golden eagle's wings would stretch from wall to wall."

"What's our stop?" asks a boy in a Baltimore Orioles cap.

"This one," says his father, Gene Marquis, a Navy engineer from La Plata who's here with his wife and two sons during a two-week western park swing. They hadn't heard about Zion's unique shuttle system before showing up this morning, but so far they're loving it. "It's great. When I'm driving, I can't see anything because my wife keeps telling me to watch the road. I like that they actually tell you what you're seeing."

The Marquises scramble off along with several other families, and I follow. The shuttle is propane-powered, and it pulls away with something less than a roar -- more like a soft grumble and a whiff of outdoor grill. Not another vehicle passes, and an exquisite desert silence fills the void, broken only by the soft mariachi shake of leaves from the cottonwoods along the river.

I've visited Zion once before, in the summer of 1999, and well remember the buzz-kill crush we'd found on this same route. We had hoped to actually walk on one or more of the trails, but it would have been easier to find parking in Georgetown on New Year's Eve than in any of the small, jammed lots in this canyon. Eventually we did what everyone else was doing: double-parked on the roadside, flattening a bit of desert vegetation in the process, and walked almost a mile through traffic just to get to a trailhead. Like many national parks, Zion was being loved to death by drivers like me. And short of banning cars from the most popular road in the park, it seemed there was nothing to be done.

But, amazingly enough in this era of intractable problems, they did something. Starting the very next year, the Park Service launched a radical pilot program that has, by all accounts, transformed the visitor's experience. From April through October, the park actually does ban private cars along the six-mile scenic route, along with motorcycles, tour buses and RVs. The only way to the park's most popular sites is by foot, bicycle or one of these free shuttles that run like clockwork from 5:35 a.m. to nearly midnight.

Visitors park in one of the lots by the visitors center or in the adjacent town of Springdale, less than two miles away. A second free shuttle loop connects spots all along Springdale's main street with the park, allowing visitors to ride door-to-trail from their hotels and making this village of 500 Utah's smallest town with a full-scale mass transit system.

In spite of some initial local opposition to closing the road in summer, both Springdale and the Park Service now consider the shuttle a boffo success. Visitation hasn't declined, and the park reports that a whopping 98 percent of recorded comments are favorable. Officials from parks around the country and as far away as New Zealand have come to see how they got the cars out of Zion.

"It was just an immediate, dramatic difference in the way visitors could enjoy the park," says Ranger Haraden. "The very first evening, a mountain lion crossed the road in front of a shuttle. I took that as a good sign."

Under the gaze of the "Patriarchs," the Marquises and I stand at the silent roadside, enjoying the phenomenon of a dead-silent national park on a glorious peak-season morning.