Heavy congestion in Yosemite Valley can leave many visitors idling in their cars and gazing at scenery through the window while hoping for a parking space/John Buckley
Editor's note: The following column was written by John Buckley, executive director of Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center in Twain Harte, California.
It’s the summer tourist season, and Yosemite National Park is gridlocked with traffic.
At 12:30 on a Saturday afternoon, a long line of cars, buses and RVs that entered the park at Big Oak Flat move slowly along the main paved road past Cascade Falls and on down to merge with vehicles coming east on Highway 140. A quick left turn brings a car into the line of traffic heading into Yosemite Valley.
Then, all vehicles come to a stop.
For the next two hours, vehicles either sit parked in traffic lanes at a complete halt or they inch forward at a pace far slower than their frustrated passengers, who get out of their vehicles and walk ahead searching for the source of the problem. There are rare surges when vehicles may move forward 100 yards before traffic returns to a gridlocked standstill. There is nowhere to even turn around.
Some drivers and passengers are stoic, others are clearly upset and frustrated by such an inescapable traffic jam.
Near the end of two hours, the traffic finally inches forward to an intersection where two park rangers stand next to a sign. The few vehicles allowed past the rangers apparently face an additional “two-hour delay” according to a message flashing on an electronic sign. But with no parking spaces vacant in the east end of Yosemite Valley, the rangers are simply requiring most drivers (who have already endured two hours of gridlock) to turn north at the Valley crossover and drive back west – out of Yosemite Valley.
Confused drivers appear bewildered and frustrated as they are funneled back out Highway 140 or up Highway 120 – headed back to the park entrances where they came in nearly three hours earlier.
But a new frustration becomes obvious.
Park employees at the entrance stations are still continuing to allow literally hundreds of additional vehicles each hour into the park to jam up behind the already gridlocked traffic. Knowing full well Yosemite Valley is jammed with traffic, park employees are continuing to charge $30 per vehicle and send hundreds of additional vehicles on into the park to literally come to a standstill and then inch forward for hours in a traffic jam. New families become trapped in the traffic jam nightmare.
Sadly, on the major highways leading to Yosemite Park, there are no flashing signs warning approaching visitors that Yosemite Valley is “full with gridlocked traffic.” Families unknowingly continue driving to entrance stations – unaware they might end up circling for hours through a looped traffic jam without ever getting close to seeing Yosemite Falls, the visitor center, or other key destinations.
The precious natural cathedral of Yosemite Valley deserves far better than the park’s current management policy. Jamming the maximum number of visitors into a traffic nightmare not only completely ruins the Yosemite experience, the gridlock concentrates air pollution from idling cars and buses in the narrow valley between towering rock walls.
John Muir and every other champion of Yosemite would be appalled to have Yosemite Valley managed as if it was a packed shopping mall in the midst of holiday sales. Yet, despite so much congestion and crowding, gateway communities continue to avidly market lodging and supplies – no matter how much dissatisfaction results from visitors disillusioned by their actual visit to the overcrowded park.
It was only a few years ago when having 3 million visitors in a year at Yosemite was nearing a record level. Then, as commercial tours and park concessionaire marketing combined to maximize tourism, park visitation climbed to 4 million. Last year, over 5 million visitors crowded into the park, and 2017 is likely to produce a visitor record that spikes even higher. More than 75 percent of those millions of visitors all cram into tiny, vulnerable Yosemite Valley.
Yosemite is a precious legacy, not just for current Americans but for future generations. It is time for the Park Service to set reasonable limits on the number of vehicles allowed into Yosemite Valley on any given day. The current management is defiling and disgracing our national treasure. Those who love Yosemite need to speak up.
Traveler footnote: For years, CSERC has publicly advocated for better management of visitation levels and reasonable limits to be set for the number of vehicles allowed into overcrowded Yosemite Valley.
Comments
"Submitted by Steve Nelson on July 23, 2017 - 3:49pm.
I'm glad I went in 2000 when the crowds were nowhere like this. I may never see Yosemite again. Yellowstone looks less and less likely that I will ever see it.
As I have said elsewhere on this site, they need a national task force with representatives from the crowded parks to brainstorm some actions they can take".
My thoughts exactly.
We should be glad that millions of people want to visit our national parks. They are connecting with nature, celebrating their cultural heritage, enjoying family vacations, and contributing to the local economy. Would we rather have them playing video games and watching reality TV shows?
The problem is not too many visitors. The problem is that we do not have enough national parks. Although park visitation has grown to record levels, we have expanded national park acreage less than 2 percent since the mid-1990s.
Conservationists have identified hundreds of places in California -- and across America -- that could qualify for addition to the National Park System. Most of them are already public lands, administered by the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, or state agencies. And most of them are increasingly being ruined by logging, livestock grazing, drilling, mining, roadbuilding, or other industrial activities.
Designating these areas as new national parks would protect them from further degradation and help to relieve pressure on Yosemite and other existing national parks. It would also save endangered wildlife and habitats, protect irreplaceable cultural sites, keep forests, grasslands, and wetlands intact to fight climate change, and help to diversify local economies.
These millions of national park visitors potentially have tremendous political power. They are the reason our parks have been so well insulated from resource extraction and commercial development, despite the best efforts of would-be exploiters. Development interests have a far easier time exploiting other public lands that do not have such a large and dedicated constituency.
Instead of thinking of ways to discourage and restrict national park visitors, we need a positive vision of an expanded National Park System. This includes strengthening and fully funding the National Park Service, so it has the resources to address today's management challenges. The alternative is more of the same, unacceptable status quo.
If even a small fraction of the multitudes of national park visitors were inspired and mobilized behind such a vision, they would be a political force far more powerful than the selfish, entrenched interests that are holding back national park progress. This would be an energizing alternative to the endless defensive battles and compromised protection efforts that conservationists have focused on for the last several decades. As the example of Yosemite illustrates, we have no time to lose.
To clarify: Even with additional parks, careful management of visitation is necessary at famous and crowded sites, such as Yosemite Valley, to prevent a degraded visitor experience and damage to the park itself. Toward that end, the suggestions by the author make sense and should be seriously considered. My point it that, although such steps may be necessary, they are only treating the symptoms, and not the root cause -- too few national parks.
People go to places for what they are, not because they are National Parks. There are plenty of places that are in the National Park System that have relatively little usage and Yosemite would be just as crowded if it were a state park or just Forest Service land. Burdening the system with additional units wont take the pressure off the crown jewels.
Between 1907 and 1945, Yosemite had a railroad. It ran from Merced to El Portal. At El Portal, passengers transferred to stagecoaches and later motorcoaches for the remaining 12 miles to the valley floor. If in 1945 that railroad had been extended to the valley, on a cog-assisted roadbed, the current overcrowding would not exist.
But no, we Americans love THE CAR! From asphalt pavers to concrete manufacturers, the car enjoys high-paid lobbyists in Washington, DC. And the romance that the car is Daniel Boone, while the railroad is just corporate greed. So Daniel Boone, aka, the American motorist, is given swaths of asphalt across the valley floor. The railroad, needing but a tenth of that space, is reviled as the Devil Incarnate. Bring a railroad into Yosemite Valley?!!! Over my dead body, aka, the car!
No, Michael Kellett. We don't need more parks. We rather need to grow up in managing the ones we have. Reservations are a start, but don't get to the larger problem of too much development purely serving CARS! In Switzerland, you take the train. Why not in the United States?
Oh, we pretend to know so much. We insist we are globalists and believe in free trade. But on learning from the world about great trains, we still don't have a clue. The next thing you know, readers here will be blaming Donald Trump for the overcrowding in Yosemite Valley, citing the lack of parking lots rimming the park.
Historically we had the answer--then threw it all away. We were going to be independent of our fellow man--and woman. We were going to DRIVE!
And so we did--and now we promise to make our cars driverless. Anything but give them up. More parks will not solve the problem of a culture running amok.
But hey. We can call it green. Kid ourselves once again. We're good at that--in fact, we have perfected it. And you want your national parks to escape?
Go ahead. Make your "reservations." But the problem is still the car.
Interesting, Michael. As most everyone knows, more folks will indeed visit a particular place if it's a national park. But will this disseminate visitation more evenly among the parks? Beats me, but an interesting thought to consider.
Couldn't agree more. I have visited most of the NPS properties in the West and in the past few years have noted an increased number of photographers trying to take advantage of the optimal lighting conditions to photograph - times when most visitors are not yet up or long headed back to camp/motels, etc. Yet, with few exceptions, NPS has been slow to recognize and take advantage of that trend by scheduling shuttles (even limited runs) or opening/closing (even by reservation) to accommodate a "special interest group of individuals" that arguably does much to publicize the wonders, beauty, and history of our natural treasures especially with today's media and technology. If I'm up early, or late, to shoot I'm headed back to or usually in camp for a good meal and a nap during peak visitor hrs.! It has been a recent, welcome, trend to see some NPS properties offering limited access for full moon or dawn photo opportunities. BZ to those folks.
I tend to agree that calling a place a "national park" or putting it under NPS jursidiction doesn't necessarily do anything to boost visitation if the place isn't going to attract that many visitors anyways. Location and attractions will be the primary drivers for visitation.
The Columbia River Gorge Scenic Area (Forest Service) gets over 2 million visitors a year. The only national Park in Oregon (Crater Lake) gets less than 700,000 a year. The location near Portland is the driver for its visitation, and I doubt it would be better if it were declared a national park. And in Califonria, Shasta Lake is managed by the Forest Service while Whiskeytown Lake is managed by NPS. Shasta gets way more visitation because it's bigger. It also doesn't charge for visitation while Whiskeytown does.