San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Big Sur’s new focus: fixing ‘ selfie tourism’
Ask anyone who lives in Big Sur about the changes the region has seen in the past five years and they’ll tell you horror stories about photoobsessed “selfie tourists” clogging Highway 1 at Bixby Creek Bridge — parking in the narrow roadway, causing hourslong traffic delays and dangerously posing for pictures on the landmark bridge.
“It’s a goat rodeo,” says Butch Kronlund, executive director of the Community Association of Big Sur — especially on holiday weekends, he says. A resident of the famously beautiful region for 31 years, he’s witnessed an alarming regression in visitor behavior since the advent of camera phones and Instagram.
“Now the landscape is just a backdrop for people’s antics,” Kronlund says.
Those antics, he and others say, include urination along
Highway 1, litter at popular overlooks, trampled vegetation and other issues that have fueled local ire toward outsiders. Talk of more strictly managing access by travelers to the remote 70mile stretch of coast has been percolating for many years.
But now Kronlund’s group, which has worked to protect Big Sur for nearly 60 years, has produced a plan that promises to change the Big Sur experience considerably, and potentially create a model for other hightourism areas in California.
On Dec. 1, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to accept a 120pluspage plan from Kronlund’s group outlining shortand longterm measures for controlling the flow of the millions of tourists who visit Big Sur each year. They include: Establishing an optional day pass drivers could buy online to access the various parks and parking lots around the region. Proceeds from pass sales would fund local conservation groups. A yearlong moratorium on parking at Bixby Creek Bridge and potentially closing off parking near the bridge permanently. Requiring advance parking reservations at highprofile spots, including the area’s most popular beach, Pfeiffer Beach. More frequent highway patrols and zealous enforcement of traffic laws. A ban on dispersed camping and campfires in Los Padres National Forest, which stretches across the mountainous area along much of Big Sur’s eastern edge.
It may be years before these changes take effect, but the county’s approval signals that a transformation could be on its way. If the vision comes to fruition, it will fundamentally change the experience for people who expect to be able to pull over wherever they wish. Those hoping to see the most popular spots would have to plan their trips in advance rather than show up at their leisure.
Advocates hope the plan can save one of the country’s premium stretches of undeveloped coastline from falling victim to its global appeal.
“I think there’s not one of us here who isn’t conscious of … the responsibility that we have to ensure that we keep Big Sur as it is,” Monterey County Supervisor Mary Adams, who represents the region, told fellow supervisors earlier this month. “I feel that it is an absolute sacred ground in so many ways that we have a responsibility to protect.”
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Tourism is the dominant industry on the Monterey Peninsula. Visitors generate $ 3 billion annually, according to the county tourism bureau. Big Sur, a vast unincorporated area spanning a winding stretch of coast and accessible only via Highway 1, is almost wholly dependent on roadtripping visitors who come to hike, sightsee and relax.
Exactly how many tourists pass through Big Sur each year isn’t known; rough estimates range from 4.5 million to 7 million, an amount that would put Big Sur ahead of Yosemite and Grand Canyon national parks in annual visitorship.
But the price of hosting those millions of visitors has become too great, according to many of Big Sur’s 1,500 fulltime residents, many of whom moved to the area seeking an escape from urban living. Litter and human waste blight popular stops from Bixby Creek south to McWay Falls, another picturesque overlook that is an Instagram favorite. Limited lodging options drive people to pitch tents and spark campfires illegally or irresponsibly in Los Padres National Forest, which covers much of
Point Sur the region.
Two years ago, “Overtourism is killing Big Sur” was scrawled in yellow paint across the Bixby Creek Bridge parking lot. A banner with a similar message was hung from the concrete span.
“Tourism can be both an opportunity and a threat,” says Costa Christ, president of Beyond Green Travel, a sustainable tourism development consultancy. “It just depends how properly planned and managed they ( tourists) are.” The Community Association of Big Sur commissioned Christ to conduct a 10month study on visitor behavior in the region spanning 2019 and the early, prepandemic months of 2020, which informed its new management plan. Christ has examined tourist destinations around the world and promotes business practices that balance benefits to local economies and the natural environment. He likens tourism to fire, which, he says, “can help you survive” or “burn your house down” if not properly maintained.
The core issues gnawing at Big Sur are universal, Christ says. Stray trash, traffic bottlenecks and aggrieved locals are tenets of popular destinations from Maui to Venice. The key is finding ways to mitigate and manage them. That’s where Big Sur faces unique challenges.
The Coastal Act, which was enacted in 1976 and strictly governs development along
Detail area
California’s western edge, makes installing public bathrooms, trash bins or even new road signs along Highway 1 extremely difficult, Christ says. A patchwork of agencies shares jurisdiction over Big Sur; they include the California Coastal Commission and State Parks, the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Caltrans, the U. S. Forest Service and the county Board of Supervisors. Getting consensus from the various bodies can be tough even on simple issues, Kronlund says.
“There are some trust issues about what it means to protect this place,” Kronlund says. “My job is to get that trust back.”
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While the coronavirus pandemic and shelterinplace mandates have reduced the number of travelers to the area this year, problems have persisted at Big Sur’s pinch points: Bixby Creek Bridge, the popular Pfeiffer Beach, with its narrow access road and small parking lot, and the picturesque overlook above McWay Falls.
“The hot spots were still hot,” said Kirk Gafill, general manager at the popular Big Sur restaurant Nepenthe. “We’d still see clusters of activity that made you realize it doesn’t take a lot of visitation for those areas to be challenged ( by traffic). That, to me, was an eyeopener.”
Kronlund’s proposal would close the parking lot at Bixby Creek for 12 months, thereby encouraging more people to take public transportation ( a local bus line stops at the bridge), and use community volunteers to shoo away pedestrians hoping to walk along its span, a popular but illegal activity on the state highway.
A proposal for a new 20to 25car parking lot and walking path south of the bridge was scrapped after feedback from lawmakers. Now the idea is to launch a new shuttle that will carry passengers from the north end of Big Sur to Bixby Creek for photographs. Drivers, however, would be barred from parking near the bridge altogether.
“That’s what we’d like to see happen but it’s going to be difficult,” Kronlund says. “We want to experiment with some things and see what works.”
Visitors to Pfeiffer Beach, accessible only by a long, onelane offshoot of Highway 1 that leads to a modest parking lot, would need to reserve paid parking spaces in advance or hop a shuttle from the highway. Kronlund envisions it working similarly to the system implemented two years ago at Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County. At McWay Falls, where drivers often stop on the highway shoulder to avoid a $ 10 parking lot fee, roadside parking would be prohibited. Eventually, a parking reservation system might be appropriate there too, according to the plan.
The plan touts the potential for shuttles to transform travel to and from the region and cut down on congestion. Such shuttles would be financed by a proposed day pass tourists could buy that would grant access to the various state parks throughout Big Sur.
The plan also calls for creating more turnouts along Highway 1 to smooth traffic, and for reducing speed limits through congested areas. A stronger police presence and traffic enforcement would help too, Kronlund says.
Zoning rules all but prohibit new restrooms from being built along the Big Sur corridor, but the plan identifies the need for them at several key stops, including McWay Falls, Garrapata Beach, Abalone Cove, Partington Cove and north of Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. Each new restroom would come with trash cans, too. Kronlund hopes to cut through the red tape and get buyin for new restrooms from the various agencies.
Notably, the plan also calls for a regional ban on dispersed camping in the national forest during fire season “until proper backcountry monitoring and enforcement exists.” A fire that burned 132,000 acres of Big Sur in 2016 was linked to an illegal campfire in Garrapata State Park on the northern end of the region.
Kronlund would like to see the problems at Bixby Creek, Pfeiffer Beach and McWay Falls addressed in five to 10 years. The pandemic period, he says, could be a moment to begin a reboot of the region. “We know that as soon as a vaccine is readily available that people are going to want to go to wild and scenic places like Big Sur ... and we’re not prepared for it, still, even though we’ve had this moment in time to prepare,” Kronlund told county supervisors.
At the county meeting, Supervisor Jane Parker even floated the idea of a threeyear moratorium on advertising Big Sur to travelers. “There’s enough out there already that I don’t think we need to entice people to this particular area, especially because it’s been a bit overloved,” she said.
The first step, all agree, is quantifying the pressures — how many cars, how many people — and more clearly documenting illegal activity. Kronlund’s association has installed three traffic counters in the region and is working on installing more on Highway 1.
“Now we’ll have real numbers on how many cars per day and real information on what people are doing,” he says. “That will help us understand the full scope of what’s going on down here.”