Looking to the future, county touts two new slots on YARTS board
Two decades after the founding of YARTS, the public bus system that takes travelers from gateway towns to Yosemite National Park and into Yosemite Valley, and nine years since YARTS began running buses from Sonora to Yosemite, the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors will get to have a say in how the joint powers authority does business.
YARTS stands for Yosemite Area Regional Transportation System. Since its formative stages in the 1990s and in its early years, it’s always been viewed as a crucial tool to reduce traffic on the way to — and inside — one of the most visited destinations in the Golden State, and one of the most popular parks in the nation.
Traffic jams with two to three hour waits were common in Yosemite Valley at times in summer 2019, the last season the park was open without coronavirus restrictions.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people visited Yosemite annually. In 1906, the park recorded just over 5,400 recreational visitors for the year. By 2016, the park was hosting a record 5.02 million visitors. Over the next three years, the park averaged 4.25 million visitors annually from
2017 to 2019. In 2020, the year of coronavirus restrictions, the park hosted 2.26 million recreational visitors.
Conservationists believe Yosemite Valley has been trampled and over-developed for a century, and it is a far cry from wilderness and wild country. Park planners have long considered strategies to reduce traffic in Yosemite Valley and the rest of the park.
That’s why YARTS is considered key to the future of Yosemite, as well as the economies of its gateway counties, including Tuolumne County. YARTS has run buses from Sonora to Yosemite National Park since 2012.
Tuolumne County supervisors voted on Tuesday to accept an invite from the YARTS Board of Directors to join the joint powers authority.
The county will be represented on the agency’s board by County Supervisor Ryan Campbell, District 2, and County Supervisor Kathleen Haff, District 4.
Haff said Thursday the step is important for Tuolumne County for multiple reasons. John Gray, the former supervisor for District 4, used to go to YARTS board meetings and was not a voting member, Haff said.
Tuolumne County is one of the last gateway counties to join the YARTS board, Haff said. YARTS is governed by a board comprised of two supervisors from each of four member counties: Merced, Mariposa, Mono, and now Tuolumne. Madera and Fresno counties are non-voting members.
The YARTS board invited Tuolumne County supervisors to consider joining last year and voted in January to officially approve that invite, Haff said.
“It’s important because this agency provides transportation and reduces some of the traffic on the way to the park and in the park,” Haff said. “It needs to develop strategies to become sustainable. They’ve been around about 20 years. These are not the beginning years. These are the middle years. Now they are more into long-range planning.”
Among new challenges facing YARTS and other public transportation agencies are new regulations looming that will require electric buses and more investment in the existing fleet, Haff said.
According to the state Department of General Services, the California Air Resources Board mandated in 2018 that transit bus fleets must be zero-emission by 2040. Starting in 2029, mass transit agencies in the state will be required to purchase battery electric transit buses or fuel cell electric transit buses for their fleets.
“A lot of people use YARTS,” Haff said. “Before COVID, European tourists were among the prime users of YARTS for our county. We’re expecting an uptick of YARTS riders when COVID does finally come to an end and European tourists return to Tuolumne County.”
People from outside Tuolumne County, especially European tourists, these are the people who stay in Tuolumne County to visit Yosemite. They stay in Tuolumne County, they eat here, they lodge here, they rent rooms here, they spend money here, they don’t stay in Yosemite or Yosemite Valley, and they add to Tuolumne County’s tourism, which is the leading, most-lucrative industry in Tuolumne County, Haff said.
“We want to continue having this YARTS service so our visitors from outof-county and from Europe can continue to go to Yosemite,” she said. “The European tourists add a lot to our economy.”
In the meantime, Haff, Campbell and the rest of Tuolumne County’s elected leaders hope more local people use YARTS and take advantage of the service it offers.
“We hope more local folks will see how wonderful it is to not have to drive, to not have to figure out where to park, and even take their bicycles, so they can really see the park on bikes,” Haff said.
Asked if she has tried YARTS for a trip from Sonora to Yosemite and back on the same day, Haff said no. She said she and her husband want to plan a trip to use YARTS, bring little backpacks and their bicycles, stay overnight somewhere in the park, and come back on the last bus the next day.
This year, Tuolumne County service is scheduled to run from May 17 to Sept. 30. Fares listed at www.yarts.com show a roundtrip ticket from Sonora to Yosemite Valley and back will cost $38.
There are no additional charges to get into Yosemite beyond the YARTS fare. In other words, the YARTS bus ticket includes admission to Yosemite National Park.
YARTS is a California Joint Powers Authority composed of Merced, Mariposa, Mono and Tuolumne counties in partnership with Caltrans, the Federal Highway Administration, the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service. The Merced County Association of Governments in Merced provides administrative services and operational support for YARTS.