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US National Parks so Busy during Peak Hours, new Gate Control System Requires Online Reservations Weeks or Months Ahead

Tragedy of the commons, when tons of people all descend on a public place, the aftermath usually wrecked with garbage, spilled food and beverage, overflowing trash cans, plastic waste blowing around in the wind, and in a wild natural setting this kind of human impact becomes multiplied when there are too many people in the same place. 

China has this problem in many cities in China because they have the world's largest population. Many larger cities in China have a population of 90 million people, so many new car buyers in fact, road could never handle that many personal vehicles, so they setup a lottery system, where a person has to apply months or years ahead to get a parking space, vehicle registration, & pass to buy a vehicle, car, truck or SUV, noting how many peak traffic situations in China create stop & go congestion lasting for 3+ hours, people stuck in their car for 4, 5, 6, or 7 hour. I would piss myself if stuck for that long, especially after drinking coffee or tea, which are very popular in China. 

Road trips across rural America where you can access National Parks was historically a spontaneous thing, where you would pack up your vehicle with food, water, gear & leave as a family for a long road trip across America, some in RV pulled by a truck, others in Motorhomes, but many people take a family of 4 in a mid sized SUV, other like my wife & I are able to drive a sub-compact Corolla Sedan or Prius, sits its just the two of us, and all the other utility space sufficient for all our fear & luggage & supplies. 

We have gone on many road trips across America but frequently encounter overcrowding with our unlimited 1-year national park pass. We were even force to pay extra with the unlimited pass, for parking & for each person to access, in one case they forced us to use our smartphones to setup an online registration, but no signal in the entry area, meant we had to do U turn & drive up to the top of a ridge where our phones had 4G or 5G access, probably LTE-adv, & we were able to setup a time specific reservation in rural Moab Utah, and the hiking inside after parking, ended up being really fantastic. We met and spoke with many polite, kind, outgoing travelers like us. 

It was spectacular and worth the extra effort. That being said, having to register online when already at the gate, pay extra when we already purchased the most expensive unlimited annual pass, it made it a premium access experience at higher cost, underscoring how that makes it unfair to lower income families who's only practical vacation access is a road trip in the daily use commuter vehicle, across America, often to visit amazing National Parks. 

Even as a child I wondered, why do people in large groups wreck areas the visit? Are there too many drunk people or people high on drugs? Why anyone thinks its ok to litter & throw trash on the ground befuddles me. I consider people who litter low quality low brow low functioning inconsiderate selfish self absorbed rude people.

Many youtubers have channels called Instant Payback or Instant Karma, usually people in SUV throwing fast food containers out their window, then a do-good-er on a motorcycle with a helmet cam picks up the trash, taps on the window of the littering car, then when they open the window, throws the trash back into the vehicle that littered, forcing the littering person to realize that what they did was socially emotionally & environmentally inconsiderate, littering in most place around the world is also illegal & people who are caught littering are subject to fines, they have to pay the police a fee for littering, if the police catch them littering, often in traffic. 

In Oregon, on a road trip, my wife I spotted a No Littering sign, $6250 fine for littering, wow, we were astonished at the high fee for littering and have talked about how amazing it is that the state of Oregon had to raise the fine that high to get people to stop littering. I wonder why they are so many people willing to throw trash out of their car, truck or SUV? What is wrong with these people? Are they dumb as a box of rocks? Or just so self-absorbed they feel entitled to treat Earth as a personal trash dump.

 

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