God forbid we have more people entering the middle class, who want to explore the world.
I hate how preachy publications like Vox and The Atlantic can be. The writers come from these urbanized, upper middle class backgrounds and have no self-awareness. When I (with my small-town highschool dropout roots) read stories like this, I can't help but reword what they're saying in my head:
"Go back to being working-class scum who stays in the same place so us upper-class people can enjoy jet-setting and taking photos in exotic locations only you can dream of."
Did you read the entire article? The final paragraphs seem to suggest that on balance, the author believes that the benefits of travel by the wider population outweigh the risks of over-tourism:
"These phenomena inevitably mean more complaints from locals, and more damage and lines and selfies and bad behavior. But they also mean more cross-cultural exposure, more investment, more global connection, more democratization of travel, and perhaps more awe and wonder. Even overtourism has its upsides."
> I hate how preachy publications like Vox and The Atlantic can be.
They have been this way for decades, it's kinda their thing. Just look at the monatage scene in the orginal 1984 Ghostbusters, they roast The Atlantic pretty well 35 years ago:
Can you quote some passages that you felt were preachy? I read your comment and then read the article expecting to find the worst. But it seemed pretty even handed and didn't at all suggest people go back to being working class scum.
But maybe that's just my own biased reading. If you could point out the passages you find problematic it would help me improve my empathy.
That's not the problem. They have the right to. We encourage it. But there are too many humans.
This is just a hisper example, but pollution, food quality, democraty, education and the health system suffer from the same problem.
It's going to get worse and all we do is finding temporary solutions, not adressing the elephant in the room: promoting growth forever is not sustainable.
Actually I think you are reading way to much into it, seems to me she is neither condemning nor praising, the article conclusion does mention there is an upside to this raise in travel: "they also mean more cross-cultural exposure, more investment, more global connection, more democratization of travel, and perhaps more awe and wonder. Even overtourism has its upsides."
Some of this is overblown. Locals who live at tourist destinations have always complained about tourists, even when those tourists are the economic lifeblood of the area. Talk to anyone who grew up in a beach town.
The multiple snide comments about cruises seem both classist and misplaced. Most of those cruise ship passengers are going to travel somewhere, and having them on the cruise ship effectively minimizes their impact on locals. When they get off the ship, most passengers either take a guided excursion in an already heavily touristed area, or just go to a beach club. Would you rather they rent Airbnbs in the downtown neighborhoods of the cities they'd like to visit? Or would you rather build new resorts and timeshare communities at beach destinations?
Venice also seems like an unusual case that might need special attention. Most cruise ship ports are not beautiful places in need of preservation.
Many places in the world (especially national parks) are successfully restricting visitor volume. The solutions are well known: Require permits (either via purchase or lottery) and/or increase the cost to visit (via entrance fees, additional hotel taxes, etc.)
I grew up and still live in a beach town. Tourists were somewhat bothersome, but they allowed me to make plenty of money in restaurants when I was younger. Today the bigger problem is people are moving here. I rarely go to the beach anymore (unless it's 6am surf session) because of traffic and crowds. Just in the last couple weeks, 4 new stop lights went up near my house. But, with all the growth has also come real jobs. So it's not all bad.
> Venice also seems like an unusual case that might need special attention.
Having been to Venice, I never understood why so many people like going. It is basically one giant tourist trap.
Ecuador has done a really incredible job balancing the needed economic benefits of tourism with preservation of the Galapagos. They limit who can take tourists to which islands and when and have a carefully choreographed schedule that’s centrally managed. I believe there’s no more than 12 or so people and a guide on a given trail at a time yet the archipelago gets a few hundred thousand visitors a year. I think they even require the tour companies give a steep discount to native Ecuadorians since their tax dollars fund a lot of the centralization.
Yeah, I really don't get it. I live in a tourist city and can see the areas that get overwhelmed with tourists at times. There's a lot of money in that and those dollars drive a lot of the things about the city that are pleasant as well. Not all seasons are tourist seasons, and maybe it would be more of an issue if they were.
Pipe dream but it would be interesting to devise some increasing tax based on the number of flights you've done per year. They already ask for ID when you buy flights so it would be easily track-able. First flight 10%, second 20%, third 30%, etc. Just as a thought exercise but I'm aware of the friction this sort of idea would get. Related gif: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1013088775973556224
I was going to complain about people who live abroad (as I do), and them being penalised for returning to see their family, but then I realised that it's actually the inverse in Sweden.
You get a tax break if you travel to visit your home country, I guess it's something they want to promote.
Disincentivizing air travel could have a big impact on climate change as well. I don't understand why those who want to do something about climate change still fly around the country/world like its nothing. A single plane ride from NYC to LA emits about 20% of the greenhouse gases your vehicle does each YEAR. 5 trips in one year and you've essentially been running a second car for that year. [0]
If you care about climate change and you still fly I can't take you seriously.
You can tack this tax to jet owners too, easily charged by airports that receive them and also based on amount used. Trying to make it as equal as possible and de-incentivize excessive flights.
Interesting perspective. There are more of the middle/working classes who want to travel, but the upper classes travel more per capita. Maybe the problem isn't just us, the middle and working classes who want to see the world a little. Maybe it's also you, the privileged upper classes, who want to travel far more than the average...
The article sort of reads as a list of individual incidents but I'm not sure it's able to present itself as a particularly alarming trend.
Yes, the Mona Lisa is the most popular painting in the world. Maybe the Louvre needs to expand or build a new space for it that can accommodate more people. Maybe ticket sales should be more limited and sell out after a certain point, with a set number of visitors allowed per day/hour/etc. It sounds like mismanagement (hence the workers walkout) than the tourists being at fault.
Yes, people are dying taking stupid selfies, but not really all that many of them, either.
Yes, some landmarks are being damaged, but also, governments completely have the power to enforce their laws and limit admission, and hand out tickets for littering and vandalism.
I think I've seen the Mona Lisa... once? I go to the Louvre pretty often but that specific painting is far from the best thing it has to offer. If people really cared about it they'd just go see the one in Madrid [1], but for some reason people only ever want to see the Louvre one.
I get what I say makes me look like a hipster but it's really not what I mean, people should just take a hard look at touristy things and places and consider whether they're really worth the overcrowdedness, inflated prices, and banality of experience. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. What does it really bring to you?
Those are just temporary solutions, one day they will not be enough because of constant population growth. And you can't use them forever. Plus they all have a cost anyway.
This is like a doctor treating a symptom instead of the cause of the disease.
I think moving and experiencing the city and surrounding places for a few years is more enjoyable than short trips. I am now looking at moving to my 5th different city in 10 years. I spend my vacation days exploring around what is in my "backyard". Taking a 10 hour flight and spending a few days trying to see everything is not enjoyable to me.
For years I've been looking forward to traveling but the thought that keeps nagging me is the whole canned tourist experience which I hate.
One thought I've been trying to sell my wife on is getting a quality RV/Travel Trailer and tour the country doing contract gigs. This sounds similar to what you're describing.
That's an interesting approach. It does seem like one does need to live somewhere for two years to get a good feel for the place and how it changes with the seasons. Do you always move within the same country?
I think it's worth considering not only how online media has contributed to the very uneven distribution of interest over tourist destinations, but also how it might help fix it. The internet is used to creating power-law distributions, where a small minority of titles capture a large fraction of interest/traffic/views. Real world cities, parks and sites struggle to cope with global popularity. It's entirely possible for online media about travel to take a different set of considerations into account, and yield different top-level distributions in who wants to travel where.
Every listicle, travel-focused instagram, etc, pushes the same destinations to all of its audience. A small number of places become extremely coveted. What if we had tools and platforms that spread those eyeballs around more, where the number of impressions is related to the number of tourist arrivals per year? Stop showing so many people beautiful shots of Iceland; it's over burdened. Why should travel sites, influencers etc care to shift impressions in this way? Among influencers, platforms could place more value on uniqueness; if I've seen 5 shots of beaches in Bali in my feed this morning, maybe mix in something else. Influencers could feel a pressure to highlight comparatively under-exposed destinations. Places that produce travel content with funds from tourism departments ... well, I'd suppose that the marginal value of additional prospective visitors for Venice is small, but would be higher for a city that isn't so popular.
This year I walked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. While it was a positive experience, Machu Picchu itself was crowded, and visitors are very specifically limited in how they can walk around it. Only once I was in country did I hear about Choquequirao, another large Inca complex perched on a promontory, which is much less popular, and sometimes called "the other Machu Picchu". I can't help but feel that neither I, not Machu Picchu was well served by that ignorance.
Something that I worry about is that it seems like almost every enjoyable/empowering thing is being considered harmful to the environment/society or is becoming difficult to afford:
Driving a car, eating meat, travel, owning a home, living in a popular location (e.g New York), owning a gun, etc.
Combine that with an increasing number of people who feel socially isolated and it seems like a recipe for unrest.
If there is one thing that is for certain, this is only going to get much worse. And peoples wet dreams about a jobless society. Well, you are not going to spend all that leisure time alone on secret deserted locations around the world.
This is the type of thing that is easy to police other people, but I wonder if the author has an instagram herself filled with pictures from Italy or France.
Yes, and that's why the logic is wrong: the problem is not too many people want to do x. Wanting is legitimate.
The problem is thay there are too many people, period. And the more fair we make the system, the more they will get to do what they should expect from life, so it's going to get worse.
I often read on HN that this is not a zero sum game. Whatever, we are not leaving this earth anytime soon, and we are not producing innovation fast enough to care for everbody.
Soon, the state of mumbai will be mirrored in other places. Beggers like in LA as well. Venise and phucket are already terrible to live in.
Population is the main problem. It is a problem for food, education, hell, democraty. Eternal growth is not sustainable.
Easy to say this from a privileged position, less so when it's your vacations or work travel on the chopping block. Free movement for me, but not for thee. Wouldn't want all those unwashed masses ruining your perfect vacation.
Travel is fun, for sure, but I think our society, especially in wealthier and progressive circles, over-hypes it, to the point that you feel like you have to travel to make yourself more interesting. Maybe we need to lighten up a bit and have the attitude that staying home and reading about a far away place, yet never visiting, is cool too.
It's a negative externality. Price it into the cost, use that extra money to offset pollution/whatever, and the problem is solved. It's simple to say but nobody wants to do it because it hurts.
It'd be nice to somehow still allow people who can barely afford a plane ticket today to afford one occasioanlly for family emergencies, etc. Perhaps we do a personal threshold above which the carbon price kicks in or something. Lots of air travel is frequent fliers and they need motivation to stop.
My parents have lived in a gem of a town outside of the US for 20 years. About 15 years ago it started to pop up in top 10 lists and the last 10 years has exploded with tourism.
What used to be an extremely affordable, beautiful, and pleasant place to live and mix with the local culture is now gone.
It went from a beautiful town to Disney Land. A gigantic party city. Insane hour long lines of cars to get into the town on weekends. Real estate blew up and gigantic hotels are being built, all the homes in the center are owned by rich people from other countries as speculative investments. Tons of new bars and restaurants have opened but few of them by locals. Rich business owners from other places come in droves looking for more growth to extract money. Most people demand USD for rent or real estate deals and not local currency now, many businesses use foreign payment services for credit cards and the money never flows into the town.
Crime has greatly increased with all the money floating around. Home burglaries, car jackings and street muggings are common everyday of the week anytime of the day.
There have been some improvements from the tourism and a few hundred local families (out of the 100,000 locals that live there) have done well selling the homes their families have owned for generations. Now they can’t afford to live in the center and have to live in the outskirts.
Gone are the local restaurants, pushed out by high rents or because the owners sold the buildings, replaced by generic tourist traps pushing cheap alcohol and over priced food.
The local water supply has been drained, utilities cannot keep up with waste and demand, corruption for permits and zoning changes is rampant.
Literally thousands of homes in generic housing developments are being built in the surrounding countryside. Cheap build profit extracting developments solely to make money as the water table continues to drain lower and lower.
The only thing that has some what saved the city is lack of an airport being close by. Closest is 1.5 hours drive. But another rich entrepreneur is looking to bring a new runway in that is long enough for private jets.
That’s when it will officially be over.
An influx of money benefits everyone, but it’s also at the expense of the city. Is that worth it? I think what bothers me the most is seeing thousands of people crowd the central square and take the same photo of the church over and over and over and over. It’s within everyone’s right, rich or poor to be in that square. No one owns a city, except when the money starts coming in, and then money owns it.
I don't really see the problem here. The people of this town want it this way, or else they would be pushing their local government to make changes to limit tourism. This is a classic example of people getting the government they deserve.
Cmd+F'd the comments and not one person has mentioned overpopulation. There are more people than ever before, and the issues of crowding are simply a symptom of overpopulation. The idea of raising the prices to make it cost-prohibitive... what's the point of doing anything, then? Soon, every single hobby will have too many people doing it. Are we to raise the price of everything to be so unaffordable that we go back to spending evenings sitting in front of the television?
We need to face the problem sooner or later, and that's that we have too many people on this planet. We're going to have a massively difficult time feeding everyone in 20+ years (the meat industry is already devastating enough on the climate), "tourist crowding" will be the least of our worries. Well, until the lack of food or the climate issue sorts that first bit out.
Too many people want to travel, too many people want to eat meat, too many people want economic development, etc...
But how does someone who grew up being able to do/benefit from all these things tell the rising middle class from the developing world that they can't do these things because it's harmful?
Maybe something to do in order to tackle overcrowding in museums is to start returning some of the exhibits back to their origins. The Louvre and the British museum hold a lot of antiquities that were shipped from other countries during colonial times.
As the article states: "while many sites are inarguably overcrowded, very few cities and towns are"
People aren't really going off the path, there is plenty of opportunity to get them to do that and disperse the crowds
I travel a lot and am mostly exempt from these crowds because I'm not rushing on a 5-day trip around a 3-day weekend to jam pack tourist destinations. I'm also not going to tourist destinations probably because I've already been there - in off-season no less - or have other things bringing me to an area.
> Governments are also rolling out regulations, such as bans on tour buses in Rome and gating-and-ticketing in Barcelona.
The ban on tour buses might actually end up being counter-productive, if that one bus is replaced with many more smaller vehicles that in aggregate take up a lot more space on the roads.
A better solution would be a universal congestion fee that all vehicles entering the most congested zone pay (and yes, the fee for large vehicles like buses would be higher).
That's "I want to have done this" or "I want you to know that I've done this", but "I don't actually want to do this". Which, if you think about it, is kind of weird. We want a photo, but we don't actually want the experience.
The article misses another important cause for the surge in travel: demography. The baby boomers are retiring, many of them with spare money for traveling.
[+] [-] newswriter99|6 years ago|reply
I hate how preachy publications like Vox and The Atlantic can be. The writers come from these urbanized, upper middle class backgrounds and have no self-awareness. When I (with my small-town highschool dropout roots) read stories like this, I can't help but reword what they're saying in my head:
"Go back to being working-class scum who stays in the same place so us upper-class people can enjoy jet-setting and taking photos in exotic locations only you can dream of."
[+] [-] georgehayduke|6 years ago|reply
"These phenomena inevitably mean more complaints from locals, and more damage and lines and selfies and bad behavior. But they also mean more cross-cultural exposure, more investment, more global connection, more democratization of travel, and perhaps more awe and wonder. Even overtourism has its upsides."
[+] [-] Balgair|6 years ago|reply
They have been this way for decades, it's kinda their thing. Just look at the monatage scene in the orginal 1984 Ghostbusters, they roast The Atlantic pretty well 35 years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwKR_y93izs#t=1m55s
EDIT: The OP I am replying to has changed their posting quite a bit. Hence my comment does not make much sense anymore.
[+] [-] freddie_mercury|6 years ago|reply
But maybe that's just my own biased reading. If you could point out the passages you find problematic it would help me improve my empathy.
[+] [-] sametmax|6 years ago|reply
This is just a hisper example, but pollution, food quality, democraty, education and the health system suffer from the same problem.
It's going to get worse and all we do is finding temporary solutions, not adressing the elephant in the room: promoting growth forever is not sustainable.
I really lile this conf:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=SP6A1FD147A45EF50D&playnext...
Because it addresses the problem mathematically, and answers the usual rebukes about innovation, moderation and other "sustainable growth".
[+] [-] Mr_Shiba|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexhutcheson|6 years ago|reply
The multiple snide comments about cruises seem both classist and misplaced. Most of those cruise ship passengers are going to travel somewhere, and having them on the cruise ship effectively minimizes their impact on locals. When they get off the ship, most passengers either take a guided excursion in an already heavily touristed area, or just go to a beach club. Would you rather they rent Airbnbs in the downtown neighborhoods of the cities they'd like to visit? Or would you rather build new resorts and timeshare communities at beach destinations?
Venice also seems like an unusual case that might need special attention. Most cruise ship ports are not beautiful places in need of preservation.
Many places in the world (especially national parks) are successfully restricting visitor volume. The solutions are well known: Require permits (either via purchase or lottery) and/or increase the cost to visit (via entrance fees, additional hotel taxes, etc.)
[+] [-] matwood|6 years ago|reply
I grew up and still live in a beach town. Tourists were somewhat bothersome, but they allowed me to make plenty of money in restaurants when I was younger. Today the bigger problem is people are moving here. I rarely go to the beach anymore (unless it's 6am surf session) because of traffic and crowds. Just in the last couple weeks, 4 new stop lights went up near my house. But, with all the growth has also come real jobs. So it's not all bad.
> Venice also seems like an unusual case that might need special attention.
Having been to Venice, I never understood why so many people like going. It is basically one giant tourist trap.
[+] [-] elliekelly|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _ea1k|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pier25|6 years ago|reply
Can confirm. I'm from Mallorca.
[+] [-] lalos|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dijit|6 years ago|reply
You get a tax break if you travel to visit your home country, I guess it's something they want to promote.
[+] [-] macinjosh|6 years ago|reply
If you care about climate change and you still fly I can't take you seriously.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/climate/airplane-pollutio...
[+] [-] lalos|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frgtpsswrdlame|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ahoy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dangus|6 years ago|reply
Yes, the Mona Lisa is the most popular painting in the world. Maybe the Louvre needs to expand or build a new space for it that can accommodate more people. Maybe ticket sales should be more limited and sell out after a certain point, with a set number of visitors allowed per day/hour/etc. It sounds like mismanagement (hence the workers walkout) than the tourists being at fault.
Yes, people are dying taking stupid selfies, but not really all that many of them, either.
Yes, some landmarks are being damaged, but also, governments completely have the power to enforce their laws and limit admission, and hand out tickets for littering and vandalism.
[+] [-] throwaway50003|6 years ago|reply
I get what I say makes me look like a hipster but it's really not what I mean, people should just take a hard look at touristy things and places and consider whether they're really worth the overcrowdedness, inflated prices, and banality of experience. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. What does it really bring to you?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa_(Prado%27s_version...
[+] [-] sametmax|6 years ago|reply
This is like a doctor treating a symptom instead of the cause of the disease.
[+] [-] ganlaw|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bilbo0s|6 years ago|reply
All that said, it's still travel. With many of the comcomitant externalities still in place.
[+] [-] cafard|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0x445442|6 years ago|reply
One thought I've been trying to sell my wife on is getting a quality RV/Travel Trailer and tour the country doing contract gigs. This sounds similar to what you're describing.
[+] [-] Mountain_Skies|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abeppu|6 years ago|reply
Every listicle, travel-focused instagram, etc, pushes the same destinations to all of its audience. A small number of places become extremely coveted. What if we had tools and platforms that spread those eyeballs around more, where the number of impressions is related to the number of tourist arrivals per year? Stop showing so many people beautiful shots of Iceland; it's over burdened. Why should travel sites, influencers etc care to shift impressions in this way? Among influencers, platforms could place more value on uniqueness; if I've seen 5 shots of beaches in Bali in my feed this morning, maybe mix in something else. Influencers could feel a pressure to highlight comparatively under-exposed destinations. Places that produce travel content with funds from tourism departments ... well, I'd suppose that the marginal value of additional prospective visitors for Venice is small, but would be higher for a city that isn't so popular.
This year I walked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. While it was a positive experience, Machu Picchu itself was crowded, and visitors are very specifically limited in how they can walk around it. Only once I was in country did I hear about Choquequirao, another large Inca complex perched on a promontory, which is much less popular, and sometimes called "the other Machu Picchu". I can't help but feel that neither I, not Machu Picchu was well served by that ignorance.
[+] [-] harimau777|6 years ago|reply
Driving a car, eating meat, travel, owning a home, living in a popular location (e.g New York), owning a gun, etc.
Combine that with an increasing number of people who feel socially isolated and it seems like a recipe for unrest.
[+] [-] aaomidi|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kasperni|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] creaghpatr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] el_cujo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sametmax|6 years ago|reply
The problem is thay there are too many people, period. And the more fair we make the system, the more they will get to do what they should expect from life, so it's going to get worse.
I often read on HN that this is not a zero sum game. Whatever, we are not leaving this earth anytime soon, and we are not producing innovation fast enough to care for everbody.
Soon, the state of mumbai will be mirrored in other places. Beggers like in LA as well. Venise and phucket are already terrible to live in.
Population is the main problem. It is a problem for food, education, hell, democraty. Eternal growth is not sustainable.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Wohlf|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] francisofascii|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rthomas6|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acidburnNSA|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] advertising|6 years ago|reply
What used to be an extremely affordable, beautiful, and pleasant place to live and mix with the local culture is now gone.
It went from a beautiful town to Disney Land. A gigantic party city. Insane hour long lines of cars to get into the town on weekends. Real estate blew up and gigantic hotels are being built, all the homes in the center are owned by rich people from other countries as speculative investments. Tons of new bars and restaurants have opened but few of them by locals. Rich business owners from other places come in droves looking for more growth to extract money. Most people demand USD for rent or real estate deals and not local currency now, many businesses use foreign payment services for credit cards and the money never flows into the town.
Crime has greatly increased with all the money floating around. Home burglaries, car jackings and street muggings are common everyday of the week anytime of the day.
There have been some improvements from the tourism and a few hundred local families (out of the 100,000 locals that live there) have done well selling the homes their families have owned for generations. Now they can’t afford to live in the center and have to live in the outskirts.
Gone are the local restaurants, pushed out by high rents or because the owners sold the buildings, replaced by generic tourist traps pushing cheap alcohol and over priced food.
The local water supply has been drained, utilities cannot keep up with waste and demand, corruption for permits and zoning changes is rampant.
Literally thousands of homes in generic housing developments are being built in the surrounding countryside. Cheap build profit extracting developments solely to make money as the water table continues to drain lower and lower.
The only thing that has some what saved the city is lack of an airport being close by. Closest is 1.5 hours drive. But another rich entrepreneur is looking to bring a new runway in that is long enough for private jets.
That’s when it will officially be over.
An influx of money benefits everyone, but it’s also at the expense of the city. Is that worth it? I think what bothers me the most is seeing thousands of people crowd the central square and take the same photo of the church over and over and over and over. It’s within everyone’s right, rich or poor to be in that square. No one owns a city, except when the money starts coming in, and then money owns it.
[+] [-] magduf|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geddy|6 years ago|reply
We need to face the problem sooner or later, and that's that we have too many people on this planet. We're going to have a massively difficult time feeding everyone in 20+ years (the meat industry is already devastating enough on the climate), "tourist crowding" will be the least of our worries. Well, until the lack of food or the climate issue sorts that first bit out.
[+] [-] rubidium|6 years ago|reply
We don't have too many people. But we are making poor choices about our farming techniques, industrial practices, and infrastructure.
10 billion people can live on this planet just fine. The solution isn't less people. The solution is better care of our planet and resources.
[+] [-] kalado|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mikeb85|6 years ago|reply
But how does someone who grew up being able to do/benefit from all these things tell the rising middle class from the developing world that they can't do these things because it's harmful?
[+] [-] ninjamayo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rolltiide|6 years ago|reply
People aren't really going off the path, there is plenty of opportunity to get them to do that and disperse the crowds
I travel a lot and am mostly exempt from these crowds because I'm not rushing on a 5-day trip around a 3-day weekend to jam pack tourist destinations. I'm also not going to tourist destinations probably because I've already been there - in off-season no less - or have other things bringing me to an area.
Just disperse.
[+] [-] CydeWeys|6 years ago|reply
The ban on tour buses might actually end up being counter-productive, if that one bus is replaced with many more smaller vehicles that in aggregate take up a lot more space on the roads.
A better solution would be a universal congestion fee that all vehicles entering the most congested zone pay (and yes, the fee for large vehicles like buses would be higher).
[+] [-] Areading314|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sasaf5|6 years ago|reply