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How else would you suggest they do it? Demand has out placed the supply, it's either they charge a shitload, putting it out of reach for all but the elites, or
by tcrenshaw 4y ago
How else would you suggest they do it? Demand has out placed the supply, it's either they charge a shitload, putting it out of reach for all but the elites, or put it behind a lottery.
- q845712 4y agothe lottery itself is reasonable but $9 to participate in a digital drawing only feels ok if i think that around 90% of that is going to the national park. - It seems like what this article is saying is that you're paying $9 (edit: $5) to the contractor who runs the website, has a monopoly on the lottery system, and gets to set the lottery price. hence the ticketmaster comparison. I'm pretty sympathetic to the argument that these drawings should be extremely inexpensive ($1?) and there should be some transparancy where the fee goes. Also not mentioned in the article - I'm most familiar with how Yosemite and the parks in the sierras do it, but in those parks for popular trails there's a 6-month-in-advance lottery system, but there's also something like 10% of the quota reserved for 1-day-in-advance walk-up tickets only. So you either have to win a lottery that favors the preppy planners, OR be willing to wake up in the middle of the night and stand outside a park office for a few hours until they open. Not perfect, but it gives some options.