PENINSULA, Ohio -- Federal official...

PENINSULA, Ohio -- Federal officials awarded grants Monday totaling almost $20 million to resolve into traffic in national parks and public lands according to providing alternative transit, including trains, shuttle buses and bicycle trails.

The grants were announced in the 33,000-acre Cuyahoga Valley National Park at Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett and Federal Transit Administrator James Simpson. The officials climbed aboard the park's historic train for a tour after the announcement, which included $898000 in grants for upgrades to the rail.

Congestion is a growing vexed question in the nation's national parks and public lands, which have 700 million visitors annually, Simpson said.

"By and large those visitors publicly have only one way of getting in and around our national treasures: by means of car," he said.

The goal of the Alternative Transportation in the Parks and Public Lands program is to make pollution and congestion, preserve parklands and wildlife areas, and increase access for visitors, including the disabled.

The biggest of the 42 grants included $47 million to bribe rail cars for the Chugach National Forest in Alaska, $17 million to corrupt four buses for Colorado's White River National Forest, $14 million for propane-powered buses for Maine's Acadia National Park and $12 million for a replacement boat dock at Glacier Bay National Park and guard in Alaska.

Other casts include two park-and-ride lots at California's Yosemite National Park, a traffic thought at the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and visitor tram equipment at the Cape codfish National Seashore in Massachusetts.

The grants will total $97 million by the agency of 2009, Scarlett and Simpson said.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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