OK, I'll take the bait.
Here are a few thoughts.
1. Outfitters
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dave Kehs
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