Busing to Beauty

Yosemite Valley is a natural wonder, seven miles long, a mile or so wide and enclosed by granite walls soaring up to 4,000 feet above the meandering Merced River. It is the centerpiece of one of the first national parks and attracts about 4 million people a year. On a quiet day, you can lie in a meadow, gaze at a rich blue sky and hear the sound of Yosemite Creek leaping from the north wall of the valley 2,400 feet above. Watch the swifts dart among the cliffs, hear the jays cackle for a handout, see deer graze and feel the urban stress dissipate.

Alas, quiet days are increasingly hard to find, especially in the summers, when thousands of visitors, cars and campers jam the valley. Parking lots overflow. The air is tinged with smog, dust and campfire smoke. Traffic creeps in and out of Yosemite Village. So many flock to Yosemite that the wild beauty itself is overwhelmed by mobile urban life. On some holiday weekends, the Park Service has shut the gate until the traffic thinned. At times, there is road rage in paradise.

For two decades, the National Park Service and environmental groups have struggled to find a way to return Yosemite Valley to a more natural state and still keep it accessible to the public. The ultimate goal is to move many of the current structures out of the valley and eliminate most private autos from its roads. The idea was to establish a park-and-ride bus system in which day visitors would be required to leave their autos outside the gate or in towns on the park boundary. They then would ride buses to a point where they would transfer to one of the trams that now operate in the valley.

But a group known as Yosemite Area Regional Transportation Strategies (YARTS) has concluded that year-round mandatory busing would be a logistical and financial nightmare at this point. It would be very difficult to force people to use the bus system and costly to those who did.

The five-county transit organization has recommended a voluntary summer-only bus plan beginning next June as a two-year pilot project. It is designed to be self-supporting, although the price of a bus ride is not yet known. Only 16 buses would be used, but they would carry up to 80,000 summer visitors into the valley next year. It is far from the ultimate solution that some are seeking, but it’s an important start. If the system works, it could be carrying 10 times as many visitors a decade from now.

Even a voluntary plan faces obstacles. The Park Service cannot subsidize the effort, although YARTS got a $500,000 federal highway grant to plan and market the system. Local officials said entrance fees for bus riders would be $3 per person or $6 for a family; presently, $20 is collected for each carload of visitors. It’s important that the bus fees be kept low to make that transportation alternative attractive.

This plan must be given every opportunity to work. It is crucial to Yosemite’s future.

John Muir, the 19th century author and mountaineer, marveled at the wonder of Yosemite Valley in windstorms and blizzards as well as summer bliss. “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings,” he said. A worthy goal for the 21st century: Go to a gentler, more natural Yosemite and get its good tidings.