We need a new t-shirt to replace the old "New York Paris London Tokyo Moab" one.
How about one related to traffic? "LA Dallas Chicago Denver Moab"?
Anyone disbelieving should go out to Moab on Memorial Day weekend and try to get to Arches from town. Five miles of stop and go gridlock from town to the Arches entrance, then the road through Arches will basically be a 36 mile stop and go traffic jam, 18 miles in each direction, complete with gridlock around the parking areas and cars parked along the road for a mile in each direction at each major area. Fun, fun, fun.
Every time I visit Moab now, I see something I have never seen before. Last weekend it was *both* Lion's Park lots being completely full, and at least fifty people just standing on the pedestrian bridge over the river, staring at the water. The Lion's Park lots were envisioned as a "Trail Hub" where people could meet up with others and carpool to their trailhead. Now, the pedestrian bridge is a tourist attraction. So much for the "Trail Hub". There were cars lining the shoulder of 128 at the bottom of Porcupine Rim because the lots were full, and every campsite all the way out to Dewey was taken. People launching rafts out there had nowhere to park, so they were lining the road on the east side by the end of the old Dewey Bridge.
There was a semi-serious proposal going around to turn the tailings pile area into a gigantic parking lot once the tailings are finally gone. Since Arches is going permit-only next year, they are going to wait and see how that works out. A lot of people think there will be so much uproar over the difficulty in getting permits, that they will have a permit system to drive your vehicle in, but also implement a shuttle bus system for people who didn't or couldn't get a permit. The problem with that is that the vehicles of the people taking the shuttle have to park somewhere, and that means developing a giant parking lot, and a large piece of property like that is hard to find and $$$$$$$ at this point. Since parking is such an issue, initially they are going to have private shuttle services picking up people at their hotels and taking them up there, and they apparently are going to allow an unlimited number of commercial shuttles into Arches. Time to buy a fleet of fifteen passenger vans I guess.
