> It is beneficial to have a set of viable commercial outfitters
> capable of providing safe trips that also protect the resourse.
> Obviously, there are many people who need the services of such
> companies. In fact, it ought to be easier for someone to access
> a commercial trip than a private trip. I'm thinking of the guy
> who watches a PBS special and thinks "I'd like to do that".
> The path of least resistance should lead him to a commercial
> trip rather than an attempt to set up a private trip. If the
> commercial waiting list were ten years long and the private
> list only one year long, we'd have a lot of people attempting
> private trips when they really shouldn't.
>
But this cuts both ways. If i can't afford a commercial trip, maybe i'll
try it with my friends. Should Powell not have tried a river trip because
there was no commercial outfitter. I don't agree with the advertised into
the GC system, and think a better system is your suggestion of allocation
if we can solve the advertising $ scalping, or go to freedom of choice.
FOC, by the bye, also has this same need for advertising $ scalping
safegaurds, doesn't it.
> 2. Affordability
>
> There have been some comments on this list to the effect that
> canyon trips should be affordable for carpenters and boy scouts
> and so on. While it's certainly a pity that many people are
> priced out of the river experience, I don't think that this
> is an issue that should be part of the river management plan.
> The NPS must ensure that prices charged by outfitters are
> fair and reasonable, but that's really all they can do.
>
> There will always be a large segment of the population that
> cannot afford a river trip. Where I live (New England),
> there are lots of people who can't even afford to visit the
> South Rim (and not because of the $20 admission fee). It's
> just a question of where you draw the line between those
> who can afford it and those who can't. There's nothing
> wrong with the idea of "scholarships", as long as they're
> administered and funded by private foundations.
>
>
Again, i strugle with an allocation ,model that serves the folk who can
afford it, while those who can simply don't. Those folk who are in the
canyon a bunch can help me out here when i ask this question "how many
people of color do you see on the water?" You'll see NONE in the outfitters
brochures.
> 3. Repeaters
>
> You can't see everything on one trip. I've been reading various
> books in preparation for my next GC trip. I've read about all
> sorts of places that the guides didn't show me on my last two
> trips. And they say that you really have to experience
> the canyon in different seasons and under different weather
> conditions, not to mention different river flows. How can we
> be talking about preventing repeat trips?
This was an argument put forth by the concessionaires as a way to manage an
out of control wait list. No one i've talked to outside of GCROA, the
outfitters lobby, wants this.
>
> Repeaters are good for the canyon. Not only do they acquire
> valuable skills in running this particular river, but they are
> also in the best position to observe any deterioration of the
> resource that might result from human impacts. In the CRMP
> comments that I submitted, I complained about the helicopters
> used to exchange passengers. Now I've never seen/heard the
> helicopters, but I know that I don't want to encounter them
> on my future trip(s). And I probably wouldn't have known that
> this was a problem had it not been for various "repeaters"
> who know what it's like now and who remember what it was like
> before this particular problem began.
>
>
Amen
> 4. Private vs Commercial Allocations
>
> I've already mentioned (perhaps too often) that I think that
> the new river management system should retain the idea of a
> commercial allocation and a private allocation of user days
> (or launches). In this future system, commercial clients
> should arrange trips by looking at the schedules published
> by the outfitters and making reservations, while private
> boaters should go through a waiting list, much as they do now.
> [I'm sure there are ways to improve the private waiting list
> system, but I want to separate those considerations from the
> allocation issue.]
>
> The difficult problem is figuring out how to get the allocation
> right. My suggestion is that on a certain day every year, we have
> a "day of reckoning" where we look at how things are going with
> respect to the allocation. In effect, we will ask, "how bad are
> things for commercial boaters?" and "how bad are things for private
> boaters?" If the situation looks out-of-balance, we shift a
> small amount of allocation from one side to the other. The
> actual shift would not start to take effect for at least two years
> (for example) because the commercial outfitters will already have
> made up their schedules for the next two years. This allows
> commercial passengers to make reservations as they do now and
> it allows the outfitters to make plans, hire guides, and so
> forth, knowing exactly how many trips they will be running.
>
> The decision to shift or not, and which direction to shift should
> be based on "demand", to the extent that that elusive quantity can
> be measured.
>
> On the commercial side, I think that demand can be measured by
> looking at average amount of time that elapses between making a
> commercial reservation and the launch day. If commercial
> passengers are all waiting until the last minute to sign up,
> then demand can't be all that strong. But if a whole season
> is filled and they are forced to reserve two seasons ahead,
> then commercial demand must be relatively high. If lots of
> people are signing up far in advance and then cancelling out,
> that's an indication of softer demand. Although someone
> else can pick up a cancelled reservation, that new passenger
> will not have been "waiting" very long.
>
> So on the day of reckoning, we'll ask, "how long have
> commercial passengers been waiting for the trips that they've
> just completed?" If they had booked far in advance, we know
> that commercial demand is strong, and perhaps the commercial
> side needs more allocation. But if commercial passengers are
> able to just "call and go", maybe the commercial side has
> more allocation than it needs.
>
> If the commercial side has to lose some allocation, the
> reservation time information could be used to decide which
> companies should lose part of their allocation. Companies
> whose passengers waited until the last minute to book trips
> would lose some user days. Companies who filled up their
> schedule early with people who didn't cancel out would retain
> their allocation. This is a way of promoting competition
> among the restricted number of outfitters. A company might
> resort to lowering prices or offering innovative and exciting
> types of trips in order to attract customers and keep its
> allocation.
>
> In order to get accurate information about reservations, it
> would be necessary for commercial customers to register with
> the NPS (or some impartial private entity) when they make the
> commercial reservation.
>
Real good point here Dave. There would need to be a way to avoid loading
the list by those one or two unscrupulous concessionaires, like folk acuse
the privetes of doing.
> To get a handle on private demand, some people have pointed to
> those 6500+ names on the waiting list. But others have expressed
> doubts about what the waiting list size really means. I think
> someone implied that the list just has the names of 6500 flakes.
> Apparently, the commercial outfitters have charged that the
> list is dominated by a bunch of repeaters who usurp private
> use. I assume that they are talking about the person who does
> a trip, then joins the waiting list, calls in for a cancellation
> and does another trip, having spent as little time as possible
> actually waiting.
>
> We can get an idea of how widespread this behavior is by
> looking at the average amount of time people launching in
> a given year spent on the waiting list. If most people are
> picking up cancellations and repeating, then the average wait
> will be very short and we'd have to conclude that there is
> no need to take any allocation away from the commercial side.
> On the other hand, if there are really only a few "repeaters",
> they won't have much effect on the average.
>
NPS had a pie diagram on the wall at SLC and PHX showing how long folk are
waiting. 75% are waiting their full time, maybe participating on one other
trip, maybe not.
> There is another type of repeater who affects our computation
> of "private demand", and that's the guy (or woman) who is on
> the list, but takes a trip on someone else's permit while
> waiting for his own permit. When this guy shows up to launch
> his own trip, he may have waited 8 years (or whatever) to get
> his permit, but he hasn't waited 8 years to access the river.
True. But this chap is supposed to be the TL, and is only allowed to go one
other time. All other river users go as often as they like. This penalizes
the folks who get on the WL. What does that do to our indicator of demand?
> One could say that he's only waited the amount of time since
> his last trip. So in computing "average time that private permit
> holders waited", we should should only count the time since the
> permit holder was last on the river.
>
> Once the commercial and private waiting times have been
> calculated, I propose that we see if they are out of balance
> and if they are, we make an adjustment in allocation. The
> adjustment will be by some relatively small amount and will
> not take effect until the current commercial booking period
> is over. Even though the adjustment may not take effect
> for a few years, we can still make an adjustment every year.
> For example, if we see that things are out of balance this
> year, we can decide that N user days should be shifted to
> the private side (for example) in the year 2000. If next
> year's measurement still shows an imbalance, then N more
> user days can be shifted to the private side from the 2001
> allocation, making the total allocation for 2001 2*N
> user days less than the 1997 allocation.
>
> Under this scheme, the corrections will take a few years
> to kick in and even longer to produce noticable effects.
> But eventually, the system should reach a kind of
> equilibrium where allocation matches demand. If there
> is a gradual shift in the ratio of private vs commercial
> demand (as there has been over that past 25 years),
> the system will gradually compensate for that, though
> it may take a few years. It tries to change the
> allocations by erosion rather than by flash floods.
>
> Now I haven't been too specific about what is meant by
> "balance", and this is really the hardest question.
> Although we can come up with two numbers, namely
> "average wait for a private trip" and "average wait
> for a commercial trip", those two numbers don't really
> measure the same thing. And neither one of them
> directly measures "demand". For one thing, the private
> trip wait is really measuring the time for a trip
> leader to get a permit and get to the river. All
> the people who go with the leader also get river
> access (the same kind of access obtained by commercial
> passengers) but those people may or may not have
> waited at all. They could be repeaters who go four
> times in one season.
>
> So I don't think we should define balance as the
> point at which private waiting time equals commercial
> waiting time, as measured above. But there might be
> a magic conversion factor which, when multiplied by
> commercial wait time yields the equivalent private
> wait time. [More generally, if the relation between
> commercial wait time and private wait time is not
> linear, then there might be a magic function that
> converts one to the other.]
>
> How can we determine the magic conversion factor?
> One idea that comes to mind is to look at the "pain
> points". At what point does the length of the private
> waiting list go from being acceptable to intolerable?
> I seem to recall seeing "2-3 years" given as a
> completely unscientific answer to this question.
> It seems sort of reasonable to me. Would private
> boaters be complaining if they could lead a private
> trip with a 2-3 year wait and participate in other
> trips as often as they wanted? On the commercial side,
> 2-3 years might be more painful. We're talking
> about people who are booking vacations. For almost
> any other type of vacation, this doesn't require a
> 2-3 year lead time. So perhaps the pain point is
> one year. Just to arrive at a formula, I'll set
> the magic conversion factor to 2.
>
> So here's the system: we calculate average private
> wait time and divide by average commercial wait time.
> If the result is greater than 2.1, we move 5000 user
> days (just to pick a number) from from commercial to
> private, effective in two years. If the result is less
> than 1.9, we move 5000 user days from private to
> commercial. Otherwise, we let well enough alone.
>
> Ovbiously, some refinements are needed and it's
> possible to fight/bargain/compromise over the details.
> In essence, I suggest that we keep the parts of the
> system that seem to be working and change the parts
> that seem to be broken.
>
Som far so good. Lets just work out the bumps.
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