Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Gardner Institute: Arches timed-entry linked to lower park counts but county visitor spending rose
Summary
A Kempe(y) Gardner Policy Institute presentation to the Grand County Commission concluded Arches National Park saw lower visitation after timed entry was adopted, while county-level visitor spending and private-sector jobs increased; commissioners asked for detailed counterfactual tables to be provided to match the study MOU.
Phil Deal, research director and chief economist at the Kempe(y) Gardner Policy Institute, told the Grand County Commission on May 5 that the institute’s econometric analysis showed lower measured visitation at Arches National Park after a timed-entry system began, but higher overall visitor spending and private-sector job growth across Grand County during the same period.
Deal summarized the institute’s high-level findings, saying the report compares a 2017–2019 pre–timed-entry baseline with a 2022–2024 post–timed-entry period and uses counterfactual models to estimate what visitation would likely have been in the absence of timed entry. “We think there’s about a 14% difference between what we’re estimating would have happened in Arches otherwise versus what actually did…
Already have an account? Log in
Subscribe to keep reading
Unlock the rest of this article — and every article on Citizen Portal.
- Unlimited articles
- AI-powered breakdowns of topics, speakers, decisions, and budgets
- Instant alerts when your location has a new meeting
- Follow topics and more locations
- 1,000 AI Insights / month, plus AI Chat
