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The _POINT_ of computers and websites is to lower the individual transactional costs of things like applying for a lottery. Rather than having to pick up the ph

The _POINT_ of computers and websites is to lower the individual transactional costs of things like applying for a lottery. Rather than having to pick up the phone and speak to a person, or drive to the local office and fill out paperwork. Yet somehow, the person in the toll booth option has regularly been the cheaper option than paying these immense fee's to obviously corrupt government contractors. How many web site designers and colocated machines does it take to run a freaking reservation system that probably gets a couple million reservations a day. Plus, if done correctly a large initial investment and then a trivial amount of work to keep it running, where the vast majority of the work is the local parks/etc changing the state of campground availability/etc. Put another way, everyone wants to be the credit card companies that have successfully gotten massively rich on a system where they are taking a percentage of the total transactional value rather than a trivial flat per transaction fee. And this model doesn't belong anywhere near public systems because those public lands exist for the "public", the majority of which can barely afford the gas to get to the park, much less funneling more of their meager resources to a fat cat government contractor. $6 is close to an hours work for someone making minimum wage.

Karrot_Kream 3y ago
> How many web site designers and colocated machines does it take to run a freaking reservation system that probably gets a couple million reservations a day. The cool thing about the US is that it's a democracy. If you feel so strongly about this, make this case to the government. There's precedent and it's bad, it's called healthcare.gov. I don't mean this in a pithy way btw, I'm a transit activist and I go to protests, phone up lawmakers, and attend public meetings. There are a wide array of small reasons that all sum up to the government being really bad at certain things. But again, this can change with you and me. Don't be emotional on HN, be emotional to your state reps! > The _POINT_ of computers and websites is to lower the individual transactional costs of things like applying for a lottery. Rather than having to pick up the phone and speak to a person, or drive to the local office and fill out paperwork. You're forgetting the huge growth our National Parks have seen. The days of the toll booth worked when the US had a fraction of its people, a fraction of the motor vehicle traffic, before the virality of social media, and with a more ingrained belief that a national park was a rugged place and not a place to take the family in an air conditioned, controlled experience. The old system of phone calls would have just made the parks out of reach for all of these new folks interested in them.
- joshuahaglund 3y ago
  >You're forgetting the huge growth our National Parks have seen Except this isn't true. 2022 saw 311.9 million visitors, up from 2000 which saw 285.8 million. That's not "huge" growth, that's not even keeping up with population growth (2020: 329 million vs 2000: 282 million). https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/visitation-numbers.htm https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/visitation-numbers.htm
  - solardev 3y ago
    Those extra millions aren't evenly distributed across the parks system, though. Some parks are seeing way more growth than others. Breakdown here (annual view, aggregate by park, filter by National Park designation): https://www.nps.gov/subjects/socialscience/visitor-use-statistics-dashboard.htm https://www.nps.gov/subjects/socialscience/visitor-use-stati... For example, Smoky Mountains NP went from 8M in 1980 to 10M in 2000 to 14M in 2022. Zion went from 1M in 1980 to 2.4M in 2000 to 4.7 M in 2022. Yosemite went from 2.5M to 5M+, much of that concentrated in the Valley. For the impacted parks, it is very difficult to keep up with that sort of growth. It's not like those parks grow bigger to keep up with visitation, or hire staff at the same rate, or are able to build more parking lots. Edit: And also, for Wilderness-designated areas -- whose purpose is to provide a "wilderness feel" for current and future generations, as distinct from the "crowded Yosemite lodge feel" -- it's an even tougher ask. There are only so many trails you can build through a glacier or a meadow or a ridgetop before you erode the wilderness feel completely, and it's hard to spread groups out enough on those few trails so that they're not swarming past each other.
    - landemva 3y ago
      I thought Smoky Mountain has no entrance fee, so how are they counting individuals accurately? Yosemite is popular and began to use mandatory busses. That seems reasonable, though unrelated to the topic of junk website fees.
      - solardev 3y ago
        I didn't know that, and that's a great question! Apparently they count cars and multiply it by some # of passengers per car. The methodology was recently updated:https://smokymountainnews.com/archives/item/33883-counting-cars-smokies-updates-decades-old-visitation-estimator https://smokymountainnews.com/archives/item/33883-counting-c... Buses are one step, but not always enough. Zion for example has mandatory bussing but they still need to do permits for Angel's Landing (if I remember right) and lotteries for the Narrows, especially for the few backpacking campsites in there.

Karrot_Kream 3y ago

> How many web site designers and colocated machines does it take to run a freaking reservation system that probably gets a couple million reservations a day. The cool thing about the US is that it's a democracy. If you feel so strongly about this, make this case to the government. There's precedent and it's bad, it's called healthcare.gov. I don't mean this in a pithy way btw, I'm a transit activist and I go to protests, phone up lawmakers, and attend public meetings. There are a wide array of small reasons that all sum up to the government being really bad at certain things. But again, this can change with you and me. Don't be emotional on HN, be emotional to your state reps! > The _POINT_ of computers and websites is to lower the individual transactional costs of things like applying for a lottery. Rather than having to pick up the phone and speak to a person, or drive to the local office and fill out paperwork. You're forgetting the huge growth our National Parks have seen. The days of the toll booth worked when the US had a fraction of its people, a fraction of the motor vehicle traffic, before the virality of social media, and with a more ingrained belief that a national park was a rugged place and not a place to take the family in an air conditioned, controlled experience. The old system of phone calls would have just made the parks out of reach for all of these new folks interested in them.

joshuahaglund 3y ago
>You're forgetting the huge growth our National Parks have seen Except this isn't true. 2022 saw 311.9 million visitors, up from 2000 which saw 285.8 million. That's not "huge" growth, that's not even keeping up with population growth (2020: 329 million vs 2000: 282 million). https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/visitation-numbers.htm https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/visitation-numbers.htm
- solardev 3y ago
  Those extra millions aren't evenly distributed across the parks system, though. Some parks are seeing way more growth than others. Breakdown here (annual view, aggregate by park, filter by National Park designation): https://www.nps.gov/subjects/socialscience/visitor-use-statistics-dashboard.htm https://www.nps.gov/subjects/socialscience/visitor-use-stati... For example, Smoky Mountains NP went from 8M in 1980 to 10M in 2000 to 14M in 2022. Zion went from 1M in 1980 to 2.4M in 2000 to 4.7 M in 2022. Yosemite went from 2.5M to 5M+, much of that concentrated in the Valley. For the impacted parks, it is very difficult to keep up with that sort of growth. It's not like those parks grow bigger to keep up with visitation, or hire staff at the same rate, or are able to build more parking lots. Edit: And also, for Wilderness-designated areas -- whose purpose is to provide a "wilderness feel" for current and future generations, as distinct from the "crowded Yosemite lodge feel" -- it's an even tougher ask. There are only so many trails you can build through a glacier or a meadow or a ridgetop before you erode the wilderness feel completely, and it's hard to spread groups out enough on those few trails so that they're not swarming past each other.
  - landemva 3y ago
    I thought Smoky Mountain has no entrance fee, so how are they counting individuals accurately? Yosemite is popular and began to use mandatory busses. That seems reasonable, though unrelated to the topic of junk website fees.
    - solardev 3y ago
      I didn't know that, and that's a great question! Apparently they count cars and multiply it by some # of passengers per car. The methodology was recently updated:https://smokymountainnews.com/archives/item/33883-counting-cars-smokies-updates-decades-old-visitation-estimator https://smokymountainnews.com/archives/item/33883-counting-c... Buses are one step, but not always enough. Zion for example has mandatory bussing but they still need to do permits for Angel's Landing (if I remember right) and lotteries for the Narrows, especially for the few backpacking campsites in there.