Agree, that except for a few little things, there probably will never be a way to eliminate the gridlock. I think Jim Wilkins said it best, when he said "You can only put so much litter in the cat box before it overflows", or something to that effect.
You have way too many people, coming up on a freeway, then being congested on to one lane roads (SR-2). They all want to get to the top of the mountain, but there's only a few miles beyond Mountain High, where they can even think of going. Eventually, they'll run out of snow (Big pines Highway), or they'll run into closed roads, which means they need to turn around. The intersection at Big Pines is probably the worst, as you have roads coming together, plus the parking lots to the ski resorts. Folks often try to do u-turns there. Let's look at Mountain High parking lots. SR-2 is an ancient road. There are no turn pockets into the parking lots, and everyone entering those parking lots, must cross opposing traffic (also often gridlocked) to enter. Most of SR-2 does not have places for parking, with no shoulders. Of course, that doesn't matter to some people, as they'll park there anyway, which just causes even more congestion. Often, the two lane road is down to one lane, because of the illegal parking.
As others have said, you can't just prevent the public from using public roads. This not only includes state highway 2, but it also includes all the residential roads within the village (except of course, for the few truly private roads in the village). The parking situation in the village is the same. These are old roads, and narrow to begin with.
Roads can only be closed under strict conditions, related to safety. Yes, it would be nice if that "its not safe" card could be played a little sooner.
Restrooms and trash cans? Yes, more are needed. But where do we put them (legally)? Who pays for them? No one wants any more construction up here, widening roads, or making huge cement parking lots in the forest, so the areas where restroom facilities could even be placed, is limited.
Keep in mind that these problems usually only happen when we get a decent amount of snow, and there is a holiday or weekend involved. But as you know, a good size storm is only predicted like one week or so in advance, and then, you only really have a better idea of how much snow will be involved only a day or two before the storm. How many of these episodes do we see in a year? Well, for the past few dry years, not too many. This past weekend was probably the worst so far of this season. When's the next one? Who knows. It's really hard to plan/coordinate for things like this, with little advance notice. I mean it's not like the Rose Parade, or any other scheduled event, where everyone knows the dates will in advance.
Oh and by the way, I'm sure the construction on I-15 didn't help with gridlock either. And yes folks, another round of Highway 138 "widening" is scheduled to begin, and run for a whole year. That's a double-whammy for us.
