During the current COVID-19 global pandemic, parks and open space areas providing safe places for outdoor activity are experiencing an unprecedented surge in visitation and impacts on facilities.
Take, for example, the East Bay Regional Park District, a system of 73 parks with 125,000 acres and 1,300 miles of trails. EBRPD’s pre-COVID visitation rate was 25 million a year. (For comparison, Disneyland had 18 million visits annually.) Since the shelter-in-place orders in March, the park district’s general manager estimates, the rate of trail use has doubled.
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