Wilderness Society Plan Would Restrict Cars in Yosemite Park

As officials at Yosemite National Park consider measures to reduce park traffic, a leading environmental group weighed in Tuesday with a plan that would require most visitors to take two buses to reach the park’s scenic, waterfall-adorned valley.

The Wilderness Society plan envisions three satellite parking lots outside the park where valley-destined visitors would board buses. These would ferry visitors to the west edge of Yosemite’s famed valley, where most of the accommodations, stores and restaurants are located.

From there, visitors would transfer to less polluting electric- or methanol-powered shuttle buses for travel within the valley. Campers would be allowed to drive in, but hotel guests would have to travel on the buses.

Visitors going to the valley for the day would have to reserve parking spaces in the satellite lots to be assured of bus seats.

“It will be cleaner and mean less traffic,” said Donald Green, executive director of the Yosemite Restoration Trust, a bidder for a park hotel concession contract and a contributor to the Wilderness Society study. “It means you aren’t going to have all those cars driving around looking for parking spaces.”

But whether the public and the Park Service would endorse such a system is questionable. Park officials “don’t like to take on the public and come up with a new system,” Green said. “It’s hard. Most individuals resist change.”

The idea of using satellite parking lots to ferry visitors into the valley is not new, but the Wilderness Society report provides a potential $53.3-million blueprint for how to do it. It suggests specific sites for lots and a transfer station within the park.

The report comes at a time when the Park Service is beginning its own transportation study for Yosemite. Such a study is needed to implement a park management plan that calls for measures to reduce automobile use in the valley, park officials say.

Yosemite Park Supt. Michael Finley, who declined to comment on the Wilderness Society report until he has read it, said the consultant doing the park study will evaluate the environmental group’s recommendations before issuing a final report.

Congestion in Yosemite Valley has long been a concern of environmental groups and park officials. Since 1984, the Park Service has had to divert visitors without hotel reservations in the valley to other parts of the park on busy holiday weekends.

Since 1950, annual visitation to the park has increased from 820,000 to 3.5 million. The towering granite cliffs and crashing waterfalls of Yosemite Valley are a key attraction.

“Automobile and diesel buses concentrated at scenic overlooks, along Valley roadways and in parking lots overwhelm the sights, sounds and smells of water, trees, meadows and wildlife,” the Wilderness Society report said.

Daniel Jensen, executive vice president of the Yosemite Park & Curry Co., the private hotel operator in the park, said some visitors might resist driving several hours to get to the park and then boarding two different buses to enter the valley.

Given current technology, Jensen said, “The car has less of an urban feeling” than buses.

The environmental group’s report is vague on how the plan would be financed. It suggests asking the park’s concessionaires to contribute, levying a surcharge on park entrance fees, obtaining federal highway funds and tapping state bond funds to pay the tab.

The Wilderness Society was behind the creation of the Yosemite Restoration Trust, formed to bid on a concession contract to run the park’s hotels, restaurants, stores and recreational services. The trust is among 12 potential bidders for the Curry Co. contract, which expires in October, 1993.