[Ski]

Friday October 26, 2018 12:23 PDT Olympic National Park News Release Electronic Entrance Passes Available for Olympic National Park Beginning October 29, 2018 Olympic National Park announces the opportunity for park visitors to purchase park entrance passes electronically prior to their visit through YourPassNow beginning on Monday, October 29, 2018. Once visitors purchase and save their digital pass, it is important that they print and bring the pass to be scanned at the park entrance station. “We are pleased to begin offering visitors the convenience of purchasing their park passes before they arrive,” said Sarah Creachbaum, Olympic National Park Superintendent. “Now visitors can buy a pass from home or on the road.” Olympic uses entrance fees to invest in critical improvements that directly benefit visitors, including maintaining and enhancing visitor facilities. The pass will be accepted at all Olympic National Park entrance stations. Once purchased, passes must be printed prior to use. While in the park, the paper copy is presented at entrance stations and displayed on the vehicle dashboard, particularly when the vehicle is parked at trailheads, campgrounds, and park lodges. Connectivity is limited or non-existent in the park, therefore printing the permit in advance is required. YourPassNow provides an alternative to the traditional in-person purchase method. Using a computer or a personal device, visitors can purchase park entrance passes from yourpassnow.com at no additional cost. Once purchased, passes are emailed and can be used immediately or stored on a personal device for a future use. The following Olympic passes are available on www.YourPassNow.com: Private vehicle ($30, valid for seven days) Motorcycle ($25, valid for seven days) Individual/Bicycle ($15, valid for seven days) Olympic Annual Pass ($55 valid for one year from month of purchase) The federal interagency annual pass, the America the Beautiful – The National Parks and Federal Recreation Lands Pass Series, is not available through YourPassNow, but is available for purchase at Olympic National Park and online. “NIC is pleased to partner with the Olympic National Park to offer visitors an easy and convenient way to purchase their entrance passes in advance,” said Sandi Miller, NIC Federal General Manager. Olympic joins the following public lands currently providing electronic passes and permits through YourPassNow: Acadia, Everglades, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Mount Rainier, Theodore Roosevelt, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Yellowstone, and Yosemite national parks; Castillo de San Marcos and Colorado national monuments; Whiskeytown National Recreation Area; Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area; Wayne National Forest; the Bureau of Land Management’s Lake Havasu Shoreline Sites and Yuma Field Office, and the State of Arkansas’ historic Eureka Springs. About YourPassNow Developed in cooperation with the National Park Service, YourPassNow makes it easy and convenient for visitors to purchase entrance passes and land access permits to public lands online. YourPassNow streamlines a paper-based purchase process that was previously only available at physical park locations or approved resellers. YourPassNow provides visitors a new level of recreation access to America’s public lands. For more information, please visit www.yourpassnow.com About NIC Inc. NIC Inc. (Nasdaq: EGOV) is the nation's premier provider of innovative digital government solutions and secure payment processing, which help make government interactions more accessible for everyone through technology. The family of NIC companies has developed a library of more than 13,000 digital government services for more than 6,000 federal, state, and local government agencies. Among these solutions is the ground-breaking personal assistant for government, Gov2Go, delivering citizens personalized reminders and a single platform for all government interactions. More information is available at www.egov.com. www.nps.gov

[reststep]

Hopefully backcountry permits will soon be available on the internet also.

[Ski]

That would be nice, but I think they'd rather get people face to face with somebody so they can give 'em "the pitch" about LNT stuff and all that. Last time I checked, Redwood NP backcountry permit required: in person only at the Park headquarters at Orick, with photo ID, with vehicle license plate number. (* That may have changed - it's been a couple years since I called down there. At that time, bear canisters were not required, but highly recommended.) Ergo: the level of non-compliance will most likely remain about the same.

[Bernardo]

Sounds like this will cut down on the time required to enter the park. No one wants to wait in line at a park gate.

[SwitchbackFisher]

America the beautiful pass is the way to go

[uww]

[RodF]

What is the "minimal efficiency fee" that YourPassNow (NIC, Inc.) takes off the top of each pass it sells for NPS? $10? This should be public information. But in the name of "Accelerating Federal Digital Government in the Age of Trump", it has been concealed from the public.

[MyFootHurts]

[DIYSteve]

Haven't you heard? Middlemen profiteers with opaque sweetheart pork deals make us all more free!

[Bernardo]

LoL. That article was written in November 2016 and is nothing more than a puff piece about how good private public partnerships are. Apparently, the specific program being implemented in ONP was in the works at that time and the author believed this was just dandy. Transparency is good and I would be surprised if the desired information is not disclosed. The article does not address this topic. If the government built the equivalent system using its own resources and then kept all the fees, we wouldn't have full transparency on that either. In almost all cases such a solution would entail paying a contractor to build the system so it's a question of pay up front or pay as you go later. The article asserts the pay as you go system incentivizes the service provider to maintain a good system. Implied is that the pay up front methhod ties up scarce resources and results in a less effective system over time. We don't have the data to know what is true in terms of money, but not having to buy passes at the gates could really speed things up on high volume days. One of the problem with gate operations is that the volume of traffic is highly variable.

[hbb]

Rainier is using the same system. The ranger I spoke with at Carbon River a few weeks back was pretty excited about it.