Yosemite Valley Shuttle

The best way to get around Yosemite. Even with gasoline at record lows… Why worry about refuelling when you’re in the valley? Do yourself a favor. First stop: Yosemite Village near bus stop 1. Park your car at day use and hop on and hop off the hybrid shuttles.
Even in the snow, they put chains on so why worry about parking or getting snowed in?
Haven’t met an unhappy or upset shuttle driver yet. Always pointing out things to see and do. Great at recommending which hikes to go on or what is actually open in the park.
Definitely use this free service while you’re in the park!!!

Not very many things in life are free, but the shuttle buses here are eco-​friendly and plentiful and yes, free. The driver can either be entertaining or annoying, depending on how grumpy you are. We came this time around during two rather large snowstorms, so the buses had to navigate a lot of slush and snow, yet inside the buses were quite clean and nice and toasty. After hiking for 2 hours in the sleet, it’s nice to know you can catch a shuttle somewhere pretty close by to get back to where you are staying if your feet just can’t take it anymore.
It’s funny that you can get to the shuttle stop and wait until you think you just don’t want to wait anymore, and then miraculously, after you’ve walked far enough away, the bus arrives, but you’re already too far away to jog back and catch it. So either bite the bullet and walk or be patient.

I LOVE the shuttle service. Park the car and hop on the shuttle. Best way to get around Yose Valley. Some drivers are more entertaining than others and I had the best shuttle driver this past weekend. Someone who truly loves his job and it shows! Thank You!

What an awesome service the park offers. It is included with the park entrance fee so just hop on in. If you have been to Yosemite you know that parking is near impossible to trail heads. So I recommend parking at Curry Village activities area (where they rent bikes) and just take the shuttle from there. You dont have to worry about parking there. Its usually not busy.
The shuttle drivers are really helpful, most of them have worked there for sometime and can direct you on the right direction.
Inside the shuttles there is a shuttle stop map, it is right overhead, use it if you dont know exactly where you are going.
They usually pass by every 30 minutes but I have noticed during aome seasons, like winter, they come in more frequently.

The shuttle system throughout Yosemite is absolutely wonderful! With the free shuttles, it allows for traffic to be cut down inside of the Valley. The Shuttle has many stops, including the parking lot, the Ahwahnee, Yosemite Lodge, Camp 4, Curry Village, and Happy Isles, just to name a few. The loop and numbering can be kind of confusing at first, or if you’re not sure where you are. Luckily they provide maps and all of the shuttle stops have a numbered sign to help out. During summer, there are several buses out and about and you can expect to wait no more than 10 minutes at the bus stop. Winter slows down and the wait can be 30+ minutes, so be prepared! Overall, the hybrid buses are a great alternative to driving throughout the valley.

We decided to take the recommended shuttle from Parking to the Lower Yosemite Falls. These are the size of city buses. Returning, at one stop the driver repeatedly urged everyone to look out the right side of the shuttle to see the bobcat. Oh, the joke is on us, she was pointing out a Bobcat Tractor parked there. Ha, ha. She explained she needed to do something to relieve the boredom of driving in circles all day. At a later stop she explained that a certain trailhead was located nearby, and if you couldn’t find it, you shouldn’t be allowed in the wilderness alone.
I don’t care if employees privately tell stories about the stupid visitors, but we should not be openly made fun of.

I’m a fan of the system because it sure beats hiking around and/​or driving around and attempting to find parking. Like every bus systems, it’s got its flaws, so don’t expect perfection. I was here in the fall, and the buses were never exceptionally crowded, but I could see how they could be crammed in spring and summer. They were maybe at 40−75% occupancy, depending on the time I took the shuttle.
I did see some people with bikes (but not any pets), so maybe the rule on bringing bikes has been recanted? Or maybe the drivers just didn’t care, so late out in the season.
PROS:
Goes to a lot of shuttle stops.
There are three different shuttles, depending on where you want to go. There’s the El Capitan shuttle, Express shuttle (goes between parking areas), and the Valley shuttle.
Heat was on, so it was nice to go out of the cold for a bit.
A lot of seating options, including seats restricted for the elderly and infirm.
Operates from 7am-​10pm, which it’s too dark to hike anyways.
I believe the buses have undergone a green initiative. Considering how much they drive around, I think that’s a really good step in the right direction for preserving the environment, but the diesel engines aren’t ideal.
CONS:
Kind of unreliable schedule. In fall, I could wait up to 45 minutes for a shuttle bus to stop at my camp.
It’s incredibly slow because of the speed limit restrictions.
It’s not always clear what stop you’re at. When I went, there was just an automated text bar that said what was next, and not a voice.
People with kids tended to sit in the elderly/​infirm section, and they never felt like moving when an elderly person got on. Yes, I sat in that section because my feet were blistered up from walking hours and hours every day. It’s likely your kids’ feet are just fine.
THE VERDICT:
It’s convenient, goes to almost any place in Yosemite you’d want to go, and even has a green initiate attached to it. Yes it’s slow, but it still beats walking everywhere you want to go. Often you have to wait a long time to catch it, too, but maybe they have more buses going in the summer and spring months? One would think so, at least. I’ve attached the shuttle map in the tips below, and it was invaluable in my planning.
Tips:
Here’s a shuttle map of all the shuttle stops. I printed several pages of this out, so I could refer to it constantly.
Also, make sure you are keeping an eye on shuttle closings. Not all shuttle stops are open year round.

Yosemite provides free shuttle service around the valley. Yosemite does not provide a service to let you know how long will take the bus to arrive to your stop in the middle of the valley.
This app provides visitors to the Yosemite Valley an schedule to know when the next bus will be arriving to your stop. The schedule gets better as more people contributes. Please help as well, and let us know when the bus arrives to your stop number.
You can also check a table of the last busses reported. This application uses your location to determine what stop are you located and how far is the bus from you.
This application is not endorsed by Yosemite National Park.
Features:
— Provides a list of busses servicing the Yosemite Valley reported by users.
— Only people located at the Yosemite Valley can report busses.
— Creates a matrix of all the stops at Yosemite and their location including 13a and 13b at Camp Curry.
This application may continue to use GPS in the background, which can dramatically decrease battery life.

Well you hear all the raves about the Yosemite Valley Shuttle. Granted it is a good substitute to take cars off the road. But it does have it’s drawbacks.
First of all most of the favorable reviews are from people who are traveling from Curry Village, and not from Yosemite Lodge nor the Ahwahnee. Good reason for this, as the shuttle runs in a counter clockwise figure 8 loop, with Curry Village where the two loops cross. Look at it like a clock. The Lodge is at 9 and the Ahwahnee is at 1. Curry village has 3 stops, at 7,6 and 2, with the Mist Trail at 4 and the Mirror Lake at 3.
Mist trail and Mirror lake are the two big attractions. You can’t drive there, and you can’t get there directly from the Lodge and particularly not from the Ahwahnee, but have to go the round about way through the entire Shuttle loop.
On the other hand, the Curry Village people can go to the Mist Trail with only 1 stop, and from the Mist Trail, go to Curry Village with 3 stops. If I want to go from the Ahwahnee to the Mist trail, I have to go through 13 stops, even though the Ahwahnee is less than a 2.5 miles away by road.
It took us 1 hour of waiting for 2 shuttles to get from the Ahwahnee to the Mist trail, at 930am in March. We actually had to transfer from one shuttle to another, and the distance was only 2.5 miles. The sign at the shuttle stop says a shuttle every 30 minutes from 7am to 10pm. 1 hour to go 2.5 miles!!! I could have hiked faster.
Second the shuttle is very slow, even during the off season. I timed it at 29 minutes to travel the 2.5 miles from the Mist trail to the Yosemite Lodge at the Falls in June 2013, through 12 shuttle stops.
I was at the Mist trail during Memorial day weekend 2012 at 3pm in the afternoon, along with 100+ people waiting for the shuttle. After 45 minutes of waiting, one shuttle comes, discharges passengers, and loads up 30 people from the line. And then a second and third shuttle come within seconds of each other, and all three shuttles get loaded to capacity, with dozens of hikers still waiting. Talk about a zany schedule!
The shuttles themselves do not have flexible grasp handles hanging from the ceiling hand railings, like you see on the New York subway. I’m 5’7″ and can barely reach the hand railings near the ceiling. And there are few vertical hand railings available to hold on when standing. And you will be standing during the late spring and summer crunch! Definitely a design oversight.
The shuttles may be hybrids, but they are still noisy, with a diesel-​electric combination. We had a room at the Yosemite Lodge at the Falls not far from the bus stop, and we could hear the shuttles all day — a very unpleasant experience.
The hybrids cannot run on the electric motor alone –when the driver was going out for a sandwich, he left the idling engine on for 5 minutes at one stop, with the diesel engine running all the time, spewing pollutants into the air.
Diesels are not efficient for low speed stop and go driving, compared to highway driving –so their advantage over gas engines as a shuttle is minimal, given that diesel costs more than gasoline. And diesel engines run noisy and emit more pollutants than comparable gas engines.
On the positive side they have an automatic level opening so you don’t have to jump down from the front of the bus onto the curb, to make it easier for people with canes or disabilities.
They are not wheelchair accessible, didn’t see any bike racks, and no dogs but seeing eye dogs are allowed.
Sign says no smoking, no eating, and no music playing, but I saw people eating on board in the back.
A sign on the outside says the back doors are for exit only, but during the crowded summer, people will get on any way they can, including through the rear exit doors.

Great service. This is the way to get around Yosemite Valley. They come frequently & traverse the Valley. It does get tight around peak times.

Great service. Couldn’t imagine park without it.

This shuttle is a MUST in summer in Yosemite and also recommended during busy weekend for any season. We usually parked in the car in Yosemite Village, bring our map and take the shuttle. It help solve your parking problem in Yosemite, reduce traffic congestion and importantly save gas. I am not sure about timing but the frequency is very good in summer especially when the bus is crowded, the next one come very often.

This is the best shuttle service I’ve ever seen. It is what I rate every other shuttle service against no matter what kind it is. They have gone hybrid, which is nice, and while I loved the old shuttles, this is a great step forward.
It’s THE best way to see the valley, and I recommend it as the first thing to do for a first timer to the Valley. It’s great.

FREE transport! This is a great service provided by the National Park, it reduces traffic on the small roads and over crowding of the lots. It’s very convenient to take and the bus runs late into the night.
I got discombobulated one time hiking in the dark around Mirror Lake and hiked more than necessary (took wrong fork). I was super happy when I finally got back to the bus stop and found it still running late into the night, it meant that I didn’t have to walk more to the car! =)
Curry Village lot can be crowded so don’t hesitate to park in another lot if necessary, the buses stop by very frequently. Wherever you go plan out your trip ahead:

Use it, it is a blessing to your body and feet. Has 21 stops thru the valley. They valley loop takes about one hour by car or bus so it is large.7 miles long. Get a map of the shuttle at the tourist info stop before you go into the park or at the park visitor center.

Thank goodness for these buses! After a 6 hour hike it’s nice to relax and ride the shuttle back. They have several buses going at a time. However in the late afternoon the line is so long it just may be faster to walk back.

What a fantastic way to get around Yosemite Valley! We made a lot of use of this free shuttle and I was very impressed by how efficient it was. It connects Curry Village and other hotels to the hiking trails and other valley destinations. Although people had warned me about nightmare-​ish Yosemite crowds, we didn’t find it a problem at all in Curry Village or on the hiking trails (granted, we were there in early October). What we did find to be a nightmare was parking. The shuttle saved us a lot of hassle in that respect. The first day we never even touched our car and just took the shuttle to and from our hiking destination (the 4-​mile trail up to Glacier Point). The second day we walked to a hike and then took the shuttle back to Curry Village.
It’s efficient (even when there’s a lot of traffic they direct you on how you can get off at one stop and walk to another close by stop on the other side of the loop, so you’ll skip some traffic), it comes roughly every 10 minutes (although I swear we never waited more than 3 minutes for it), and the drivers are friendly and knowledgeable. Oh, and best of all its FREE! I was super grateful for its existence and would recommend people use this whenever possible to avoid parking problems.

If you just finished an exhausting hike and that last mile back to the campground seems impossible… these buses are a Godsend. If you want to just tour around the valley, they are great, and some of the drivers are really funny. If you want to use the shuttles to run to the store or get to the showers… not so much; you’ll still want to use your car.

The shuttles run in a loop in numerical order (#1 through #21) and are a great, free way to get around the Yosemite Valley floor year-​round.
Yosemite Valley is about 7 miles long by 1 mile wide, but most of the valley attractions are clustered together. That being said, if you don’t mind walking a bit it’s not always necessary to take the shuttle, especially for the close-​together shuttle stops surrounding Yosemite Village. In fact, during peak season and other busy weekends it may be faster to walk rather than to take the shuttle. Yosemite Valley can be overwhelming but is quite easy to navigate on foot as directional signs, informative plaques, maps, and foot paths are everywhere.
If you plan to use the shuttle you’ll want to pick up a complimentary Valley Shuttle Map – they’re available all over the park, but I actually got mine at the Yosemite Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center in Groveland – or just ask a Park Ranger for some guidance.

Visitors are recommended to park in the day parking facility near the village and use the free shuttle bus which runs to all points on the valley floor.
There are 2 main loops which run from the village. The buses are quite large but can become quite full and crowded at busy times.
However, for the sake of the environment, the shuttle bus is the way to go. Only one gripe — it wasn’t made clear to us on our recent trip that the bus only ran from the day parking facility from Memorial Day and we were left waiting for a bus for about 20 minutes.