With a flurry of announcements and agreements signed with partners and service providers, Parks Canada is headed toward the May long weekend confident it has put into place systems needed to handle the influx of visitors to Banff National Park this year.
The announcement of free access to Canada’s national parks soon after the 2016 federal election resulted in a need for Parks Canada, as the federal agency in charge of those protected places, to have a plan in place to handle increased visitation.
Greg Danchuk, Parks manager of visitor experience, said the federal agency is confident it has put in place the necessary systems and processes to handle visitors, however many there are.
“What we have been thinking about the last six to eight months and what we are doing this year in Banff National Park and, with some of the new initiatives we are putting in place, are to help people have a great experience when they are in the park and at the same time conserve the nature and wildlife that are there,” Danchuk said.
“We cannot really predict how many people will come here, but we are trying to plan for it and we are trying to plan well ahead … we want to do this the right way. We still want people coming to Banff National Park.”
Several transit announcements have been made by Parks Canada with its partners the Calgary Regional Partnership and its On It regional commuter bus system, Roam Transit and, most recently, Brewster.
On Friday (May 12), Parks announced additional details about a free daily shuttle between Banff and Lake Louise, shuttle service to the Village and Upper Lake Louise, and a shuttle service along Minnewanka Loop.
Danchuk said Brewster was the transportation company selected to provide the shuttle service to Lake Louise from the Banff train station. The service will connect with other options to take visitors to the upper lake in summer and Moraine Lake during larch season. The service is set to run every hour, for free, from May 19 to Oct. 10.
“If (those buses) are even half full, the numbers of cars off the road into Lake Louise is significant,” he said. “That will help with congestion and people’s enjoyment of being there.”
Concerns around the effect of increased visitation aren’t just limited to 2017, acknowledged Danchuk. Parks has been seeing a consistent trend of increased visitation over the last five years – averaging a five per cent increase per year. The Banff National Park 2010 management plan, for example, set out a two per cent increase in visitation as the goal and in 2016 the number of visitors to Banff reached four million.
“We continue to put new things in practice and place to be able to manage for visitation,” he said.
Part of the work has been to better understand who is coming and, for the most part, the increase has come from the Calgary region in the form of people visiting by vehicle for the day. Danchuk said visitation also has peaks throughout the year, with 30 per cent of visitation occurring in July and August. That means 1.2 million people are visiting the Bow Valley over just those two months and the peak can be as high as 40,000 a day.
“So it is a busy place, and we know when the real crunch happens and that is what we planned for in 2017,” he said.
According to Danchuk, the approach taken has focused on ensuring facilities and infrastructure are maintained, education and proactive communications reach intended audiences, resources conservation and wildlife safety, and traffic management.
The communications piece has involved working closely with the Town of Banff and Banff Lake Louise Tourism to build on what each organization already does in terms of communications, as well as sharing data to create a strategically targeted campaign to reach visitors before they arrive.
But it isn’t just about 2017, Danchuk said, it is also about every summer after that when visitation can be expected to remain at these levels, or continue to grow. Average increases have been five per cent over the past five years – Banff has seen 25 per cent increase in visitation in a short period of time already.
He said there are no silver bullets and that building a parkade won’t fix all the issues increased visitation could create.
The concept behind Parks’ approach is a shift to demand management. That means influencing people’s behaviours and thoughts while they are visiting and also before they arrive.
Danchuk said Parks is set to release BanffNow, a new app that will provide visitors and potential visitors with real time information that will help them make better decisions about where to go.
The app encourages the use of transit and provides real time information on 15 to 20 locations in the park with respect to capacity. For example, the app would inform people if the Johnston Canyon parking lot is full, other places they could visit, or alternative times when the attraction wouldn’t’ be as busy.
Communications concerning wildlife safety will also get tougher this year after last summer Parks made the decision to kill two wolves. The wolves had gotten into human food at campgrounds near Banff and Parks Canada wildlife managers made the difficult decision to kill them as they posed a danger to people.
“We are trying to be much stronger about this from now on,” Danchuk said. “Our main line is that human food kills wildlife and that is how we want to start conversations.”
Campgrounds and day use areas will see more patrols, washrooms and facilities will be cleaned more often, garbage picked up more regularly and more wardens and resource conservation officers have been hired.
Danchuk said there has been a 20 per cent increase to full time equivalent positions at the Banff field unit for 2017 to take on that added workload. That includes approximately 90 students hired with an emphasis on local youth.
“We feel we are quite well prepared for what 2017 will bring us and this is how we are planning on doing it,” he said.
