Originally Posted by
Rowan
This is a money-raising exercise. The largess that allowed the ride through in previous years have evaporated. Permits cost money, and you know where that permit money goes.
Then there will come the cost recovery for the time allocated to the park staff to attend to junctions and make sure the event runs as they deem it should. The police here used to close roads and junctions for events of all sorts until about 10 or 12 years ago, with the department picking up the tab for the overtime. Now the events have to pay through the nose for that overtime... which likely would have been paid anyway because the police were rostered on duty.
Not all parks allow access if you are just passing through. We found this out after getting to certain gates for Zion Canyon National Park. We were going to have to pay $25 to traverse a relatively short stretch of road to connect to the highway we wanted. Instead, we turned around and trudged back to do a loop around the edge of the park. I wasn't going to pay on principle for the most expensive toll road I have ever come across. It certainly didn't cost us $25 in fuel...
This is hearsay (I was not in direct contact with them), but supposedly, the FS offered no services whatsoever for the fee paid for the privilege of riding through the forest. Arrangements were already made with CalTrans and the CHP for support and the like.
It's important to note too ... National Parks and National Forests are entirely different things. The National Park Service is under the Department of the Interior, while the National Forest Service is under the Department of Agriculture. National Parks can and do have very restrictive rules about bicycling within park boundaries.