New Flyer C40LF C-27

Location: Grand Canyon Visitors Center, Grand Canyon Village, Arizona
Operator of Vehicle: Paul Revere Transportation, L.L.C.
Date of Photo: August 20, 2019

If I were to ask you what entity in the United States operated nearly 800 transit vehicles carrying over 26.6 million passengers during 2022, would you think of the National Park Service?  The National Park Service operates transit services for a variety of reasons at many of its facilities across the country, such as to provide mobility to or within a park or for interpretive tours.  These services are provided through a combination of concession contracts, service contracts, or cooperative agreements.

The South Rim Shuttle Service at the Grand Canyon provides transportation to and within one of the most visited NPS units in the entire country.  The fleet of about 30 CNG powered buses is owned by the National Park Service and the actual operation is managed and run by Boston based Paul Revere Transportation, L.L.C. under a contract that currently runs through November 2030.  The South Rim Shuttle Service has been in operation since 1974 and prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, approximately 7.5 million people used the shuttle buses each year.  In 2022, there were over 4.4 million boardings, making it the third busiest “transit system” in the National Park Service’s portfolio.  The NPS transit services carried nearly 46 million passengers in 2019 prior to the pandemic, so like many other transit systems in the United States and around the world, ridership is still recovering from the impact of Covid.  

Have you been on any of the 80-plus transit systems within the National Park Service’s inventory?  If you aren’t sure, you can see the complete list of systems and their characteristics in Appendix D (starting on page 45) of the 2022 NPS National Inventory System List.

For more photos of shuttle buses at the Grand Canyon, please click here.