Boondocking really exists?

Less Stuff wrote:
Haven't seen any data but I would expect Privatized campgrounds to be more efficient than government run from Washington DC campgrounds.

Actually the problem is that the NFS is required to return a large percentage (85%) of the money it takes in (gross, not net) back to the general fund, not to the forest service. They were having to do the supervision, maintenance and cleaning on 15% of the funds they were taking in. So they started using private contractors who agree to take care of those things and sending a small amount to the FS (typically 5-15%), who then sends the required 85% of that amount to the general fund. But the FS doesn't have to take care of general maintenance that way. More efficient? No way to know, but CG rates have gone up far faster than inflation at the CG's I know about. In CO, concessionaire-run CG’s often cost 50% more than NFS run CG’s. I know of concessionaire-run NFS CG's with pit toilets where the rates are equivalent to nearby private CG's with FHU. Don't know about efficiencies there. With rates so high and people deciding to boondock instead, the concessionaires are pressuring the NFS to close down nearby boondocking locations to help keep the CG's full and money flowing into the coffers of the concessionaires.
And the government often pays for campground upgrades and then the concessionaire raises the campground fees. The concessionaire didn’t pay for the upgrades, but get to make a lot more money from us, the ones who paid for these improvements through tax dollars, not campground fees. I wish I could have gotten the government to pay for my company’s capital improvements so we could have charged more for our product!
Want to fix this? Convince Washington that 100% of the funds collected from camping fees go back into the campgrounds or the NFS office that they are collected from. This is one reason why one sees so many places that have a Fee Demonstration Project label on them -- the appropriate agency gets to keep 100% of the revenue generated at those sites instead of a big percentage going back to the general fund. But I’m not holding my breath.