National Park Service Emerging Mobility
Since 2018, the U.S. DOT Volpe Center has worked with the National Park Service (NPS) to develop a strategy to help national parks adapt to and proactively address emerging mobility trends, including electric vehicles and charging, micromobility, traveler information technologies, ridehailing, and automated driving systems.
The U.S. DOT Volpe Center is supporting NPS in exploring emerging mobility projects with dozens of parks across the country. The U.S. DOT Volpe Center provides NPS with extensive technical assistance at all stages of the projects, including assessment, planning, deployment, and evaluation. Findings from these demonstration projects will support future efforts related to the safe integration of these new technologies. Emerging mobility project opportunities include:
- Implementing electric vehicle charging stations in partnership with gateway communities.
- Using technology to display enhanced roadway, transit, or parking information in parks, online, or through mobile apps.
- Establishing designated pick-up/drop-off zones for ridehailing.
- Partnering with gateway communities and transportation providers to establish bike share or scooter share opportunities.
- Testing low-speed, electric automated shuttles in park settings.
On November 17, 2021 DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Department of the Interior (DOI) Secretary Deb Haaland signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between DOT and DOI on Transportation Innovation in the National Park System at an event in Washington, D.C. The MOU strengthens the collaboration between NPS and DOT to continue working together to proactively address emerging mobility trends to support visitors, encourage car-free trips, protect natural and cultural resources, and develop a more efficient, safe, equitable, and nimble transportation system. Since the MOU signing, the Departments have worked together, leveraging funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to enhance sustainable, equitable access. Emerging mobility demonstration projects across different park contexts and emerging mobility topic areas support the goals of the MOU.
The U.S. DOT Volpe Center is also supporting NPS with its partnership with the State of Michigan to advance emerging mobility and electrification initiatives. This partnership seeks to identify mobility challenges and opportunities that can be addressed through emerging mobility pilots in and around NPS units in Michigan. In August 2023, Michigan and NPS launched the National Park Service Mobility Challenge Program, which sought proposals from the mobility industry for emerging mobility projects to enhance access to NPS units in Michigan, and surrounding local communities. In 2024, Michigan and NPS will seek to implement pilot projects from the Challenge.
Completed Emerging Mobility Projects
Access to Transit Route and Schedule Information
General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) is a standardized data format for transit schedules that allows easy integration with travel planning applications, either developed by third parties (such as Google Maps or Apple Maps) or the transit operator (including on NPS digital products). GTFS feeds can either be “static,” displaying a pre-determined, fixed schedule, or “real-time,” displaying live updates of bus positions and expected arrival times.
GTFS feeds increase the visibility of park transit services and facilitate easier trip planning for travelers. They are also useful for communicating any deviations or alterations to transit schedules, such as holiday hours, stop closures, or seasonal schedules. If real-time tracking is enabled, GTFS lets riders view the location of their bus as they wait, allowing for more accurate planning and improved awareness during delays. Once a GTFS feed is created, the schedule will remain valid and operational until the end of service date specified in the feed, with minimal maintenance needed outside of adding any new schedule information.
In 2023, the U.S. DOT Volpe Center and NPS created static GTFS feeds for 10 park transit systems identified as pilot sites. The U.S. DOT Volpe Center staff facilitated conversations with GTFS industry leaders to gather best practices, met with each pilot park to understand unique park transit contexts, and generated the feeds using the National Rural Transit Assistance Program’s GTFS Builder. The U.S. DOT Volpe Center validated the feeds and worked with NPS staff to upload the completed feeds to a central location on NPS.gov. The U.S. DOT Volpe Center also facilitated conversations with third party navigation applications to discuss ingesting the NPS GTFS feeds. Using lessons learned from these pilots, NPS and the U.S. DOT Volpe Center are exploring expanding static feed rollout to more park transit systems and advancing research on the logistical and technical aspects of real-time GTFS.
Completed static GTFS feeds on NPS.gov. Source: NPS
Displaying Harpers Ferry National Historical Park bus route using GTFS. Source: NPS
Harpers Ferry National Historical Park bus. (U.S. DOT Volpe Center photo)
Real-time Road Closure Information
Transportation Data Exchange (TDx), is a data specification that provides a format for sharing updates on dynamic roadway conditions and events with third parties (such as Google Maps and Apple Maps). TDx is useful for sharing information in several scenarios, including planned maintenance/construction, diversions due to special events, extreme weather events causing road closures, and routing for local-access roads. TDx helps increase awareness of alterations to traffic patterns and communicate road conditions to drivers before arriving at the impacted site. This creates a safer driving experience and increases access by proactively prompting drivers to take an alternative route prior to arriving at the park, rather than directing them to the incident site.
In 2022, the U.S. DOT Volpe Center worked with NPS to pilot the development of TDx feeds to provide real-time updates on road closures during the recovery from monsoon damage at Mojave National Preserve. The team worked to scale this solution across NPS by creating the NPS Road Closure and Incident Alerts Application using the TDx specification. Using the Road Closure and Incident Alerts Application, park managers only need to create an alert indicating a road closure/incident using a simple internal form. This then automatically updates the NPS TDx feed and updates all platforms that utilize it, such as third-party mapping applications and NPS digital products. Without the Road Closure and Incident Alerts Application, parks needed to manually contact third-party applications and update the park website to communicate travel information.
The U.S. DOT Volpe Center continues to work with NPS to improve the Road Closure and Incident Alerts Application to address unique road closures and incidents that occur on public lands, as well as help communicate this information to service-wide audiences. The U.S. DOT Volpe Center and NPS are also working with FHWA to continuously improve the TDx feed specification to include more unique types of incidents and closures that occur on public lands.
Road closure at Mojave National Preserve displayed on NPS.gov using the Road Closure and Incident Alerts Application. Source: NPS
Automated Shuttle Pilots
With the U.S. DOT Volpe Center support, NPS launched the first-ever automated shuttle pilots on any recreational public lands in the country in 2021 at two iconic NPS locations. The pilot at Wright Brothers National Memorial, the Connected Autonomous Shuttle Supporting Innovation (CASSI), ran from April to July 2021. The Wright Brothers pilot was conducted in partnership with the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT). The automated shuttle pilot at Yellowstone National Park operated from June to August 2021. The Electric Driverless Demonstration at Yellowstone (TEDDY) brought visitors to and from the lodges and campground in Yellowstone’s Canyon Village.
These pilots involved the deployment of low-speed, electric automated shuttles in different operational settings. To date, most automated shuttle pilots have been held in urban areas, and the remote setting at Wright Brothers and Yellowstone provided NPS and industry leaders with an opportunity to assess the suitability of these technologies for use in public lands. The goal of the pilots was to evaluate how automated, electric vehicle technologies perform in public lands and guide long-term decisions about transportation in parks, including enhancing access and encouraging green, car-free trips. Additionally, the NPS aimed to:
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Enhance the visitor experience by facilitating new interpretive opportunities and improving mobility assistance.
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Demonstrate the use of automated shuttle technologies for public use in novel operating environments, including rural/remote areas and/or recreational settings in mixed traffic, and how those outcomes could be applied to other public lands.
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Identify and overcome unforeseen regulatory and organizational barriers of emerging mobility technologies.
Left image: NCDOT’s Connected Autonomous Shuttle Supporting Innovation (CASSI) being deployed at Wright Brothers National Memorial. (NCDOT photo) Right image: The Electric Driverless Demonstration at Yellowstone (TEDDY) at Canyon Village. (NPS photo)
From the inception of both pilots, the U.S. DOT Volpe Center provided NPS with technical assistance on considerations around automated shuttles and vehicles. This support included the development of a sources-sought request to learn more about automated shuttle technologies and a request for quotes that resulted in the selection of a private vendor to conduct the Yellowstone pilot. The U.S. DOT Volpe Center staff supported NPS throughout planning discussions with NCDOT and other project partners for the Wright Brothers pilot.
The U.S. DOT Volpe Center staff also provided technical expertise on automated shuttle technologies to NPS staff, including developing reference materials and presenting to NPS audiences. These materials and presentations were used to inform NPS decision-making regarding the automated shuttle pilots, as well as additional potential future pilots. The U.S. DOT Volpe Center also assisted NPS in developing approaches for risk management as a part of planning for the shuttle pilots, along with a user survey to collect data about passenger experiences and attitudes toward automated shuttle technologies at NPS sites.
Following the completion of these two automated shuttle pilots, Volpe produced a detailed evaluation. This evaluation involved assessing the performance of the shuttles and their automated technology based on a range of metrics collected during the pilots, including shuttle ridership, route performance, battery performance, and interventions from the shuttles’ safety operators. By assessing the shuttles’ performance in Wright Brothers and Yellowstone remote/recreational settings, the evaluation can inform potential use cases for these technologies at other NPS and public land sites. The team also conducted interviews with park staff and project stakeholders to document lessons learned, in order to inform future implementation of automated shuttles or other emerging mobility pilots.
Evaluation documents for the automated shuttle pilots at Yellowstone National Park and Wright Brothers National Memorial include: