Summer Travel Tips
Update, May 12th, 2026
Yellowstone-Teton Clean Cities works to advance alternative fuels, vehicles, infrastructure and sustainable transportation opportunities in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Our newsletter aims to connect you to resources, funding and events in our region.
Good afternoon sustainable transportation enthusiasts,
As we are on the cusp of the busy tourism season we experience in the Greater Yellowstone region, we wanted to highlight some resources that will hopefully help make your local and regional travel a bit smoother. The less vehicles idling in traffic, circling for parking spaces or individuals traveling solo in a vehicle, the less greenhouse emissions will be emitted, and we are all for that. We can summarize this into 4 main actions:
1) Plan your regional travel in advance.
2) Walk, bike or bus, especially when it is easier to try out a new mode of transportation in the comfortable warmer weather.
3) Park responsibility: enable logical and practical parking for everyone.
4) Employers: offer incentives to your employees to walk, bike or bus.
Regional travel
If you are planning to visit Grand Teton National Park this summer, be sure to check-out their robust construction page. There are many road closures at various times throughout the summer and this will help you to plan out when and where you want to go and pivot to another location if needed. Other resources include: Wyoming DOT’s construction page, Montana DOT’s construction page and Idaho DOT’s construction page.
Walk, bike or bus
Commuting: The City of Bozeman has some great commuter programs on their transportation page. Big Sky SNO offers a “One Less Car Program” to encourage carpooling or using transit on your ride to work. In Idaho Falls you can use GIFT to get to work or simply around town (you can learn more about GIFT’s impact HERE). Teton County commuters can look to START for current commuting options. Be sure to try START on-demand for around town travel as well. Friends of Pathways will be offering a bike to work program this summer, be on the look-out for more information.
Park Responsibly: the downtown cores in our region are about to be particularly busy. Rather than assuming you should be able to park where you can easily find a spot in the off season, if you work in the downtown area or will be in the area for longer than 3 hours, plan to park where your community allows longer dwell times. For example, the Town of Jackson has an excellent map with parking times and vehicle types specified. The Town of Jackson also has a newsletter with parking updates.
Employers: offer incentives to your employees to walk, bike or bus. Thank-you to all who already do this! If your business's audience is tourists in the region, it might be in your best interest to support your employees’ actions that could help reduce congestion and improve the visitor (and local) experience. These actions are typically slightly inconvenient, otherwise they would just be doing it, and an incentive is a wonderful way to thank your employees for further supporting a good experience for your patrons. These incentives can be as simple as paying your employee a fixed amount each day they park in a space not near your business (leaving it open for customers), paying for their bus pass, offering a rebate to go towards a commuter bike, or simply purchasing bikes for employees to use for commuting or getting around town for work or personal errands during the work day. These are just a few, we’ll have more suggestions here soon.
And don’t forget! If you are interested in capturing the federal alternative fuel tax credit, your infrastructure needs to be installed by June 30th! Reach out to us if you need support making this happen.
