A sign of things to come is the recent opening of a 600-room Marriott hotel and convention center in Fish Camp, not far from the Highway 41 entrance on the Fresno side of the park. Hotels need guests year-round. To attract them, they'll be marketing the park. Second, as the San Joaquin Valley continues to grow in population, more folks will live close enough to visit Yosemite on day-trips. It's these one-day trips, particularly, that add cars to the traffic equation.
People staying in the park are more likely to travel by shuttle bus, bikes or on foot.
As a result, Lehman argues that reducing overnight lodging in the valley isn't an answer. It doesn't address the greater problem of coping with day-tripper traffic. Finley is hopeful that some solutions are possible. For one, he believes the hotels outside the park will want to provide their guests with their own bus service. Some conservationists believe a fair political answer is to create transit staging areas in existing mountain communities such as Groveland, Mariposa and Oakhurst.