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Most places in the US are like that - just show up. Some places are too popular and would be way too crowded, and the situation is pretty dire for the most maje
by ploxiln 3y ago
Most places in the US are like that - just show up. Some places are too popular and would be way too crowded, and the situation is pretty dire for the most majestic and famous places around SF.
I did the popular half dome trail in yosemite, jeez ... 10 years ago, and despite the limits it was quite a crowded line, at the cable you hold while climbing up the slope of the dome. My family goes hiking in Shenandoah in Virginia almost every year (probably 15 times in my life) and we don't reserve entry or trails or anything, and there's no lines.
Anyway, it's a kinda funny situation - do you want to promote the outdoors to the general populace? Do you want them to be accessible to all? Well you just can't, the popular places will be absolutely crushed and destroyed and quite dangerous too. There's plenty of un-popular places people could go, but they're not popular ...
- zhoujianfu 3y agoThey should just make it a raffle instead of first come first served. That’s what all the online drop collectible places do now after a few years of fighting the bot arms race.
- cldellow 3y agoCanada has some national parks that do something like this. Lake O'Hara's booking system this year is a random queue: > In lieu of a random draw, Parks Canada will be employing a queuing system to help manage the expected high demand. Users may navigate to the reservation service webpage beginning at 7:30 AM. At 8:00 AM all users waiting will be randomly assigned a place in the queue. This is not influenced by how long users have been waiting. Any users arriving to the website after 8:00 am will be placed in the back of the line. When users reach their turn, they will be alerted via an on-screen message. At that point, they have 30 minutes to proceed to the reservation website and make a reservation.
- geraldwhen 3y agoIf this is queue-it, there are mass automation tools. Even if it isnt, $50 in resi proxies will give you 100 positions in the queue vs 1. Source: I won a lot of queues by Sony, AMD, and Walmart.
- Retric 3y agoHolding a lottery without limiting people to one entry by say requiring your name to enter is dumb, but I am not surprised this happens.
- geraldwhen 3y agoGerald, Gerrald, Ger.ald. Sony was restricting PS5s by address at one point, but adding an apartment number (to a house) or a 0 to an address got around the limit for the first year. Depending on how valuable the item is, an incredible amount of manpower will go into defeating bot protections. I made a lot of money after spending a lot of time doing adversarial research and bot development.
- Retric 3y agoIt’s easy enough to require the name to exactly match the credit card name used or your kicked out of the fast queue. That’s the thing about these lotteries, rejecting people isn’t an issue.
- geraldwhen 3y agoCredit card name can also be fudged. And with 200 valid queue positions with <1 minute timers, that’s a lot of attempts. I’ve beaten every queue system I’ve come across, and that includes at least 8 different retailers.
- Retric 3y ago> Credit card names can also be fudged. Not really, in cases where it actually matters like car rentals they don’t let you do many things that “fool” the half assed systems. Frankly most queue systems aren’t designed to be robust because the company doesn’t care they are making the same money either way.
- throw9away6 3y ago[flagged]
- ghaff 3y agoI'm going to say that, in this day and age, an online reservation system for very scarce reservations that basically requires sniping to win a slot is a bad system.
- oh_sigh 3y agoWhat would stop bot makers from just having thousands of their bots enter the raffle?
- bluecalm 3y agoThis happens for material things all the time (collectibles, snickers, limited edition of anything) but in case of experiences (concerts, access to trails) the id verification at entry is a good mechanism to defend against it.
- tshaddox 3y agoCharging a nominal fee to enter the raffle might. Like how all raffles work by definition.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoJust make the ticket personal and non-transferable. No need to disadvantage the poor to make it 'fair'.
- throwaway049 3y agoGlastonbury Festival does non-transferable by having a long period to register interest and upload a photo of yourself, then if you snag a ticket your photo gets printed on it and checked at the entrance. Their primary problem was resellers - it's still a scramble when the ticket sale begins.
- oh_sigh 3y agoGood to fight against resellers but bad for normal users - some people might get sick, or have something else come up, and not being able to give a ticket to a friend is a bad experience.
- Thiez 3y agoOTOH since this scheme eliminates scalpers tickets may be significantly cheaper, which is a good experience. I imagine it is a net positive.
- bluecalm 3y agoIt's not like raffle solves the problem. Instead of bots you can multi accounters/users. The logistics is more complicated but doable if the item is desirable enough.
- greiskul 3y agoFor something physical, specially something run by the government, you can ask people during account creation for some identification like full name + date of birth, not allow duplicate accounts to enter the same raffle, and check the id of the winners when they get there (so you don't have companies creating bots).
- throw9away6 3y agoHarder to game, if desired enough people will still game it by buying entries for others
- cowsandmilk 3y agoGrand Canyon’s river lottery doesn’t use recreation.gov and has measures to prevent multi accounters including lifetime bans (which have been enforced) if you apply with multiple accounts in the same lottery.
- bluecalm 3y agoI was answering to a comment any collectibles. There multi-accounting is rampant and little can be done about it. When it comes to non-physical goods then a lot more can be done about enforcement.
- eru 3y agoWhy a raffle and not an auction? Auctions are the standard way to find a price that balances supply and demand. (Give poor people money, if you think they need the help. No need to decide for them what is best for them by giving them help in the form of tickets. Are you afraid they'll buy booze instead?)
- xnorswap 3y agoAuctions are terrible because of the uneven distribution of wealth. You end up with a situation where the wealthy can do everything and the poor can do nothing. And then there's the super rich, who could buy out the possibility of anyone else participating, literally turning such places into their private playground for eternity if they so wished. Like, what price could you price it at where: 1. You could afford to go occassionally 2. Elon Musk couldn't just buy out every single ticket for the next decade to make it their personal playground. There's simply no feasible solution to that. Just auctioning everything and letting capitalism take its course just denies a vast segment of society from participating at all for activities where demand outstrips supply. Supply & Demand only works if supply can be increased, so that as prices rise there's incentive for greater supply. For things like National Parks or Taylor Swift concerts, price discovery through "supply and demand" does not work because supply can't increase to match supply no matter the price.
- eru 3y agoGive poor people money, if you want to help them. Giving them a park ticket is equivalent to giving them the auction price for the ticket but restricting them to use it on park tickets. Very condescending and paternalistic. > Supply & Demand only works if supply can be increased, so that as prices rise there's incentive for greater supply. No? Where did you get that idiosyncratic notion from? Auctions work just fine for eg van Gogh paintings, and they have been in decidedly fixed supply since 1890. Auctions also work well for things that are in fixed demand. Of course, in that case you have suppliers bid, not buyers. You can also have a two-sided auction where both suppliers and buyers bid.
- 3y ago
- refurb 3y agoThis is what they do with The Wave. I believe they allow 20 per day. 10 are first-come first-served and 10 are a lottery you can enter for a few dollars in advance. Seems pretty fair to me.
- shp0ngle 3y ago...that is exactly what the actual article is talking about. The lottery makes most money go to Booz Allen Hamilton.
- refurb 3y agoHow do we know the money goes to Booz Allen? Presumably there is some sort of contract between BAH the government to run Recreation.gov? Does BAH keep the whole fee? Do they keep some of it? Did they get paid $0 and only get the fee?
- giantg2 3y agoA lot of that is in the article. Nice little graphs of it too.
- refurb 3y agoPlease point it out? All I see is how much goes to the park, with the assumption the rest goes to recreation.gov, but just because the recreation.gov gets it doesn't mean Booz Allen keeps it all.
- jfengel 3y agoBooz is recreation.gov.
- refurb 3y agoI get that, but Booz is a government contractor providing this service. Presumably there is some details in the contract that lay out where money collected goes. Some fees collected go to the Park Service, and some don't. Does Booz keep everything else? What are the contract details with the government?
- shp0ngle 3y ago...do people actually read the articles before commenting? There is a raffle. And the money from the ruffle goes to Booz Allen Hamilton.
- giantg2 3y agoNo, it appears half the people here did not read the article nor even look at the graphs.
- jefftk 3y agoThe article doesn't say that Booz's contract lets them keep the lottery fees--do they?
- lifeonlars 3y agoWho do you think gets them if they don't go to the parks service?
- 93po 3y agomaybe the hat and tie wearing bears in the parks are running the lotteries and stealing the money for themselves
- clusterhacks 3y agohttps://www.wsj.com/articles/national-park-fees-booz-allen-68d4d6d8 https://www.wsj.com/articles/national-park-fees-booz-allen-6...
- klempner 3y agoThe legitimate "raffle" structure in question does not typically require people to pay if they don't win the raffle.
- ghaff 3y agoSo long as people have to pay if they win the raffle, I'm hard put to see the justification for a raffle entry fee.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoWhat if we tackled the bot arms race differently? Instead of fighting it, embrace it - and fight the market for support services instead. That is, let people script their way if they want to, just make them do it in the open, and treat it as a match-making problem. The scheme would be as follows. There's N levels on the ladder, with some amount of tickets allocated to each level. Bottom level is for normal people without tech augmentation; most tickets are allocated there, and aggressive bot detection is employed. You can implement a raffle there if it feels more fair. Remaining levels on the ladder are for those who want a chance to get ahead with automation. Apply Elo or whatever chess players or Overwatch uses to make sure people compete at their level of sophistication. This would reward and incentivize individuals learning useful life skills, while making selling the tools less useful. Of course I can think of 10 reasons why this wouldn't work in practice, but hey, I never heard anyone even considering this idea before, so maybe it can be rescued somehow.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoI want to go hiking, not play some stupid game.
- rob74 3y agoThe exception that confirms the rule is The Wave, which is located somewhere in the middle of nowhere on the Utah-Arizona border and only accessible via a lengthy hike, but has the distinction of having been the epitome of "instagrammable" already years before Instagram was invented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wave_(Arizona) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wave_(Arizona)
- tshaddox 3y agoI’m not sure what you mean about that being an exception. The Wikipedia article details an extremely strict application process to access that place.
- rob74 3y agoWhat I meant is that it's not one of the "majestic and famous places around SF", like Yosemite, it's really remote - but due to the strict limitation to only ~64 people per day, it's still the most sought after destination (making the most money for Booz Allen Hamilton).
- allturtles 3y ago> My family goes hiking in Shenandoah in Virginia almost every year (probably 15 times in my life) and we don't reserve entry or trails or anything, and there's no lines. I went to look up hikes in Shenandoah since this sounds like it could be part of a nice road trip with my family, and ironically I found that the most popular trailhead requires getting tickets through recreation.gov: https://www.nps.gov/shen/planyourvisit/faqs-oldrag.htm https://www.nps.gov/shen/planyourvisit/faqs-oldrag.htm So perhaps the problem is spreading? Luckily it seems it's not nearly at "The Wave" levels of scarcity, you can actually get tickets on most days: https://www.recreation.gov/ticket/10088450/ticket/10088451 https://www.recreation.gov/ticket/10088450/ticket/10088451
- ghaff 3y agoDay hiking permits are fairly uncommon on US federal lands in my experience. Backpacking permits are significantly more common but except for the extreme cases as are mentioned in the article are fairly easy to come by--except maybe at the most extreme times--and are commonly free (except for maybe parking).
- alistairSH 3y agoOld Rag is a fairly unique hike for the area. The upper part of the hike is an exposed rock scramble with good views. The hike, in total, is long enough to be challenging, but not really technical or dangerous. And it's close enough to DC (<2 hours) that weekends were a madhouse, especially during COVID. The remained of the park, and all the surrounding areas, are first-come, either free or with minimal permit/entrance fees.
- foobar_______ 3y agoReservations only became required for Old Rag somewhat recently. I think this is a covid thing. I'm really torn, I want people to be happy and healthy outside but covid and social media has made doing this a mad house. Regulating day tickets is a necessity at most places nowadays
- 0_____0 3y agoIt's getting to the point where areas that are under consideration for becoming National Park land get significant pushback from locals — we don't want to become another Yellowstone, they say! In the Northeast you do see some spots getting a little crowded but it's absolutely nothing like the tourism-industrial complex that are the big western national parks. Acadia is about as bad as it gets here, but mostly it looks like "theres a lot of folks here." Yellowstone is a mess of badly driven RVs, yahoos ripping around on rented side-by-sides, just a lot of really ugly concentrated MURCA.
- ghaff 3y agoAcadia is broken up enough that, if you stay away from certain sections of the park loop road and Mt. Cadillac, it's pretty manageable. Though even the western parks are a bit like that. The Yosemite Valley is a mob scene for much of the year. But there are actually pretty large and very nice sections of the park that aren't nearly as bad.
- InitialLastName 3y ago> Acadia is about as bad as it gets here, Acadia is about all there is in the northeast, in terms of National Parks. The positive side is that there's a ton of wilderness in the northeast that doesn't suffer from the National Park marketing badge (and thus any draw from the rest of the country), and so are less insane. Even so, some of the state parks within a reasonable trip of NYC (notably Harriman/Bear Mountain) can get a bit crazy.
- ghaff 3y agoThere is now the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine--although that was (and probably still is) controversial among some locals. It's fairly remote by northeastern standards. It's adjacent to Baxter State Park but the latter significantly limits cars in the popular area of the park. The issue for locals wasn't so much crowding as I recall but concerns about restrictions to traditional sporting uses of the land. I haven't really followed how all that played out.
- 3y ago