Re: Recreation . Gov

Just wondering if anyone knows how many day entries Recreation.Gov issues for a given day for Yosemite. I was in the valley last Tues. and it looked like full blown summer traffic. If the object of reservations is to control crowding, that experiment is not working.

Well- in the meantime I saw a FB post that says recreation.gov issues 1600 or more reservations daily. Since there is a three day window for use that means a potential 4,800+ reservations in use on any given day.

Plus, you have anywhere from 1-6 people in each car.

Since there are no shuttle buses running this summer there is a lot more traffic in the Valley as people who usually would have taken the shuttle buses are now driving their own cars around the valley and parking is in short supply.

No Shuttles makes it even worse. For example, we are hiking from Tuolumne to valley, and no shuttle means we have to drive to cars. If the Hikers shuttle was running, we would bring 1 car!

I think there's some confusion, at least in my own mind.

There are no shuttle buses running within the valley this year (nor were there last year). In past years there were shuttles (a) in the eastern end of the valley (frequent, the Valley shuttle) as far west at Yosemite Lodge going to Ahwahnee, Happy Isles, etc., and (b) in the western end of the valley out to Bridalveil falls (less frequent, the so-called El Capitan shuttle)). No shuttles in the valley = more traffic congestion in the valley. IIRC there were problems with this service in 2019, as Aramark didn't take care of bus maintenance like it was supposed to.

There used to be a shuttle bus within the TM area - ran all the way to Tioga pass and to around Tenaya lake, possible further. Aramark stopped running that even before the Wuhan virus panic. Nice of NPS to sign a contract that didn't require Aramark to run it. IIRC, even when Aramark ran it it charged for it, whereas DNS ran it for free.

But to get from the valley to TM, you'd want to take the YARTS bus. That's still running this year: once a day from the valley to Mammoth from June 15, then twice a day from July 1 through the end of August. https://yarts.com/routes-and-schedules/mammoth-lakes-tuolumne-meadows-yosemite-valley/

Maybe there used to be a free shuttle from the valley to TM run by NPS or DNS?

DNS and then Aramark used to run a hikers shuttle in the morning from the valley to Tuolumne, for a fee.
YARTS runs from the valley to Tuolumne in the late afternoon, which doesn't work for hikers who want to hit the trail in the morning.

The Hikers Bus info, with times and fares, is still on aramark's website.
I'd be pleasantly surprised if it ever ran again.

Here's an excerpt from the Fresno Bee---- “An additional 1,000 passes will be released Sunday-Wednesday and an additional 650 passes will be released Thursday-Saturday, for a total approximate target of approximately 5,000 vehicles in the park each day.” Park officials said in April that vehicles in Yosemite this year might increase to as many as 6,480 park-wide each day, about 90% of vehicles in the park in 2019. Yosemite had more than 4.5 million visitors in 2019.. If the intent is to limit overcrowding, they're sure going about it in an odd way.

Wow. That's a lot of cars with not a lot of parking spaces.

So a little confused, I am old, is YARTs running or not?>

YARTS is running. You can find the schedules on the YARTS site.