Wildly popular Muir Woods to start requiring reservations

A Marin Transit bus displays a suggestion as it passes lines of parked cars along Muir Woods Road, near Muir Woods National Park, in Mill Valley, Calif. where parking is always challenging as seen on Thurs. July 9, 2015, less A Marin Transit bus displays a suggestion as it passes lines of parked cars along Muir Woods Road, near Muir Woods National Park, in Mill Valley, Calif. where parking is always challenging as seen on Thurs. ... more Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 28 Caption Close Wildly popular Muir Woods to start requiring reservations 1 / 28 Back to Gallery

For the first time in a century, visitors will soon need a reservation to enter the famous Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County.

The National Park Service and Marin County have agreed on a deal that will limit vehicle access and parking at Muir Woods, and will set caps on the number of visitors allowed in the monument.

Muir Woods now draws nearly 1 million visitors a year — more people than the entire population of San Francisco — creating traffic jams on the narrow, winding roads that lead to the woods, and a huge parking problem.

“This is a problem that has festered for many years, and has been getting worse,” Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, wrote in a letter to National Park Service and Marin County officials earlier this year. Huffman brokered a deal between the Park Service and the county that would restrict parking on the county road that leads to the forest.

At different times, up to 1,000 cars are parked on a single day along the road shoulder on busy weekends. The July 4 weekend was one of the busiest on record, the Park Service said. More than 6,000 visitors crowded into the woods, a place that John Muir once called “the best tree lovers monument that could be found in all the forests of the world.”

“We are really concerned about the problem,’’ said Chris Lehnertz, general superintendent of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which manages Muir Woods.

Under the deal, parking along the Muir Woods Road will initially be limited and eventually eliminated altogether.

The proposed solution would also require advance reservations to drive or take a bus to Muir Woods, using a system similar to the one used for visits to Alcatraz Island. The Park Service estimates the reservation program will go into effect in two years; the parking restrictions will be phased in over seven years.

80% arrive by car

More than 80 percent of the visitors to Muir Woods come by private car and about 20 percent by tour bus or shuttle bus. Only a handful hike into Muir Woods, and they would not be affected.

The Park Service says the vehicle reservation system will cut the number of daily visitors to the woods from more than 6,000 visitors during peak periods from April to October now to a maximum of about 4,500. It would also restrict visits the rest of the year to about 2,800 a day to reduce the amount of vehicle-generated runoff into nearby Redwood Creek during the rainy season.

Two years ago, the Park Service proposed building a satellite parking lot on the Panoramic Highway above Mill Valley, but that set off a huge uproar from neighbors in the area. The Park Service withdrew the Panoramic parking lot plan, but then proposed a shuttle bus station near Muir Beach, 3 miles from Muir Woods. Neighbors didn’t like that, either. At a raucous public meeting a year ago, neighbors accused the Park Service of trying to turn Muir Woods into “a kind of Disneyland.”

They later joined a group called the Mount Tam Task Force, and sued to stop the Muir Beach bus station plan.

Late last year, Huffman helped organize what he called “an ad hoc group of stakeholders” to try and solve the parking and congestion problem.

The changes won’t go into effect immediately. The reservation system, which will be managed by a private firm, won’t begin for two years, and the major restrictions on parking along the Muir Woods road won’t go into effect for five years after that — the summer of 2022.

Timetable too slow

That’s not soon enough for the Mount Tam Task Force. The group filed a notice of intent to sue Marin County on grounds that the timetable is too slow, and puts at risk endangered coho salmon and steelhead trout in Redwood Creek that flows through Muir Woods and Frank Valley.

The group is represented by Christopher Carr, an attorney with Morrison Foerster, a San Francisco law firm. Carr said public parking along the shoulder of Muir Woods Road puts all kinds of pollutants into the creek.

Redwood Creek has been a salmon spawning stream “for millenniums,” Carr said, but human activity — mostly cars — is damaging the stream. “We are at a crucial point,” he said.

The county, the notice of intent says, “has turned a blind eye to its obligations to maintain Muir Woods Road and enforce parking restrictions on it.”

The Mount Tam Task Force wants the parking restrictions imposed as soon as possible, or before the rainy season starts in the fall.

Reservations are key

In the meantime, the Park Service says it needs time to put out a “request for proposals” for a privately operated reservation system. “People are used to using smartphones and tablet technology to make travel plans now,” said Lehnertz of the Park Service.

The reservation system is key to managing parking, she said, and it would take about two years to advertise and set up the system in what she called “a business opportunity” to partner with the Park Service. Once the reservation plan is in place, the roadside parking issue can be addressed, she said.

The deal between the county and the Park Service was agreed to in a memorandum of understanding by unanimous vote of the Board of Supervisors on June 30.

Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: cnolte@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carlnoltesf