[q845712]

the lottery itself is reasonable but $9 to participate in a digital drawing only feels ok if i think that around 90% of that is going to the national park. - It seems like what this article is saying is that you're paying $9 (edit: $5) to the contractor who runs the website, has a monopoly on the lottery system, and gets to set the lottery price. hence the ticketmaster comparison.

I'm pretty sympathetic to the argument that these drawings should be extremely inexpensive ($1?) and there should be some transparancy where the fee goes.

Also not mentioned in the article - I'm most familiar with how Yosemite and the parks in the sierras do it, but in those parks for popular trails there's a 6-month-in-advance lottery system, but there's also something like 10% of the quota reserved for 1-day-in-advance walk-up tickets only. So you either have to win a lottery that favors the preppy planners, OR be willing to wake up in the middle of the night and stand outside a park office for a few hours until they open. Not perfect, but it gives some options.