Joshua Tree shuttle service shut down due to funding shortfall
Following a short sprint, the Roadrunner has come to the end of its trail.
The Joshua Tree National Park shuttle service, which began service in February 2018, will no longer be operating in the fall, the National Park Service announced Wednesday.
The free service carried park visitors to several noteworthy locations in the park. News Channel 3 covered the Roadrunner’s inaugural launch.
“So we’ve got about 6 or 7 stops inside the park,” park superintendent David Smith told News Channel 3’s Katie Widner. “As you know congestion has been a big issue inside the park. So our goal from this process is to be able to have folks hop on the bus, leave their cars behind.”
Roadrunner’s demise comes at a time as Joshua Tree National Park continues to see steady growth; in 2018, over 2.9 million visitors came to the park, a jump of over 3 percent. Before the service started, the park saw a noteworthy spike – just around 1.3 million people passed through the parks gates in 2013.
When it was first launched, the magic number of riders needed for the program to be considered a success was 25,000, according to Smith. The cost was $310,000, with $230,000 being eaten by the park, and the remaining being filled out with a low carbon transit funding grant.
Although the “two-year pilot program” is over, the NPS and its transportation partner, the Morongo Basin Transit Authority, “look forward revisiting the program” in some form in the future, according to NPS.
The service’s last ride was in May.
