Entrance fees at Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park set to go up in 2020
COURTESY HAWAII VOLCANOES NATIONAL PARK
The National Parks Service today announced that entrance fees at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park are slated to go up in 2020.
Entrance fees at Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park on Hawaii island are slated to go up in 2020, the National Park Service (NPS) announced today, in order to provide additional funding for infrastructure and maintenance.
The new fees, effective Jan. 1, 2020, will be $30 per vehicle (up from $25 currently), $25 per motorcycle (up from $20) and $15 per pedestrian or bicyclist (up from $12). The receipt allows entry for seven days.
“When I began my tenure at Hawai‘i Volcanoes in 2004, the park was approaching its 100th anniversary, but it already looked 100 years old,” said park Superintendent Cindy Orlando in a news release. “The centennial and subsequent years have seen additional stressors to park infrastructure, trails and historic buildings, and the corrosive environment of an erupting volcano doesn’t help. The $5 increase, effective in January of 2020, will mitigate these effects as we continue to address deferred maintenance within the park.”
The annual Tri Park Pass, an annual pass that allows visitors unlimited entry to Hawai‘i Volcanoes and Haleakala National Parks and Pu‘uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park, will increase in phases, going to $50 from $30 June 1 and then up to $55 in January 2020.
The price of the annual America the Beautiful National Parks and Federal Lands Annual Pass and Lifetime Senior Pass will remain $80.
In 2017 Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park logged more than 2 million visitors, and visitors in 2016 spent more than $159.2 million in communities near the park, supporting 1,917 jobs in the area, according to the National Park Service.
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Like many other national parks across the nation, Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park is suffering from a combination of aging infrastructure and higher volume of visitors, which has put a strain on park roads, bridges, waterlines and bathrooms. Nationwide, there is a backlog of about $11.6 billion in deferred maintenance.
Additional revenue from higher entrance fees at Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park — projected to bring in an additional $60 million — will go toward a new roof at Jaggar Museum, the rehabilitation of the Ohia Wing into a cultural museum and archives, and improvements to the park’s water system and trails.
