Yosemite's day-trip buses roll San Francisco Examiner - May 23, 2000 The new bus system carrying day visitors to Yosemite Valley is off to an astoundingly popular start, the executive director of Yosemite Area Regional Transportation Systems said Tuesday. But even as YARTS' boss, Jesse Brown of Merced, was proclaiming the system's success, environmental firebrand David Brower was denouncing it. "Stop! Before it is too late," Brower admonished Brown in a letter sent Monday. The system, which involves a dozen buses supplied by Yosemite Concession Services, takes passengers from Merced through Mariposa into Yosemite Valley daily via Highway 140. On weekends, there is a one-bus run from Coulterville through Buck Meadows and into the Valley via Highway 120. Until June 15, the service is free. Brower recently resigned from the Sierra Club Board of Directors, in part because he objected to its unwillingness to oppose "a dirty diesel bus program." In his letter to Brown, he lambasted the board for condoning "this environmental travesty." Brower called the new system "an affront to the grandeur of the nation's premier national park and a potential threat to public health." As a practical matter, he wrote, "declining Yosemite visitation even amid economic boom times has limited auto congestion to only three or four days a year. . . . Limited congestion is not worth the trade-off of the National Park Service getting into the diesel bus business." The YARTS buses have been making four daily round trips into Yosemite Valley from Merced and nine out of Mariposa, Brown said. "It's going to be a hit," he said.