Proposed $5 entrance fee for Mt Washington Summit Building

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Depends on what bills you think OBS owes that aren't included in their summit lease agreement with NHSP. Obs is funded for the most part, through donations.

Obs used to charge an entry fee to their Summit Museum. Cog and MWAR agreed to man-handle that through tickets/tolls and pay Obs directly, the same year the Obs renovated the Museum to be interactive, rather than simply audio-visual. Cog decided to stop paying. Now who owes whom ? Obs volunteers cook for NHSP summit crew. Part of lease agreement, or part of " one hand washes the other"? Obs still has a gift shop inside the summit building, so they at least have some " petty cash."

I may be one foot on a banana peel, but ALL of this $$ sniping was supposed to be negotiated and decided among the Summit Partners through the MW Commission. Wonder why that hasn't worked.

Neither Wayne nor Howie seem to want it to work. Next ?
 
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I think you are shooting the wrong messenger with your frustration. I believe that it has been publicly stated that the Obs owes a lease fee to the state for its presence on the mountain and that the voluntary per passenger fees from the cog and autoroad was intended in part to offset this cost? It was also stated in the news that the Cog, under its new consolidated ownership, had elected to stop paying this fee and also has stated public objections to Obs violating his companies claimed rights on the summit? So my comment was if the Obs has some financial commitment to the state on the summit and this cost was offset by fees from the Cog and the Autoroad, how does the Obs continue paying the commitment to the summit if a major contributor is not contributing?. Speculation on my part is that there should be renegotiation with state?

Complicating the subject of summit operations is the major increased year round state staffing of the summit which appears to be increasing with the addition of employee to manage the new wastewater treatment system. As you stated the OBS is supplying services to the state in doing their management role on the summit and as a destination attraction to both cog and autoroad guests as well as the hiking public. It makes sense to me that as you stated, one hand should wash another in a common in demand space. This apparently has broken down reportedly due to the Cogs owner deciding that his firm does not have to abide by the decisions of the advisory summit commission. Your final statement also implies that the autoroad is also in some way objecting to the arrangement in place?.

It looks to me like you and I expect many other folks on the sidelines are quite frustrated that the state has allowed the Mt Washington Commission to fall down in its advisory role at the summit?. Ultimately its the states call on how things are run on the summit with the advice of but not necessarily the consent of the summit commission. Looks to me like your frustration should be directed to the state.

It also seems to be that the usage of the summit has increased substantially, I have not seen any statistics on total usage pre Covid but the Cog has been very vocal about setting new passenger records year over year with the upgrade of their equipment. I have not heard of any recent upgrades to the autoroad that have substantially increased their through put but unless a surge in hiker traffic is a major contributor to increased usage, common sense is that the Cog's additional traffic is a major cause of the summit water supply and waste disposal capacity being exceeded. The logical way to pay for those upgrades is per head of those who potentially benefit from the services offered and that is what the proposal calls for. If the Obs feels that the museum is a shared service for summit visitors then its up to them to make the case to the summit commission and state to formalize funding based on visitors entering the summit building. If the summit commission is unable to agree, the state has the right to impose the cost to subsidize the cost of the visitor center and if the case is made the entire cost of the Obs presence. The alternative is to access some other budget like room and meals but the state park system is expected to self support so I expect raiding the room and meals tax or other state funding is very low probability.
 
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A five-dollar fee to enter the only building with bathrooms? What could possibly go wrong?
 
nartreb said:
A five-dollar fee to enter the only building with bathrooms? What could possibly go wrong?
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peakbagger said:
This fee goes directly to the state...
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These are good observations.

Predictions: Additional $ will go to state government and not come back; workers actually on the ground at the location will not benefit; the resource will be further degraded.

It's starting to sound like the Adirondacks over there...
 
I’ve never really understood the Obs business plan. Is it a research facility, a national weather service outpost, an attraction or a hostel? Or all of the above?

Whatever it is it’s clear that it is unsustainable financially. So a new formula / approach is needed.

I would not look to the state for help. They refuse to adequately fund their own park system and F&G.

The highly touted NH Advantage is based on a system of fees charged to residents, or even better, out of staters. With the red tide sweep in the NH legislature in the last election things can only get worse.

So Live Fee or Die me hardies!
 
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ChrisB said:
I would not look to the state for help. They refuse to adequately fund their own park system and F&G.

The highly touted NH Advantage is based on a system of fees charged to residents, or even better, out of staters. With the red tide sweep in the NH legislature in the last election things can only get worse.

So Live Fee or Die me hardies!
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Watch the politics, please.

Tim
 
ChrisB said:
I’ve never really understood the Obs business plan. Is it a research facility, a national weather service outpost, an attraction or a hostel? Or all of the above?

Whatever it is it’s clear that it is unsustainable financially. So a new formula / approach is needed.

I would not look to the state for help. They refuse to adequately fund their own park system and F&G.
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The state provides millions in general fund dollars to the park system. Unfortunately, the department has a history of propping up certain properties with massive subsidies (such as Cannon Mountain ski area, which is frequently in the red), while leaving other properties with next to no funding.
 
rocket21 said:
The state provides millions in general fund dollars to the park system. Unfortunately, the department has a history of propping up certain properties with massive subsidies (such as Cannon Mountain ski area, which is frequently in the red), while leaving other properties with next to no funding.
Click to expand...

Watch the politics, please.

Tim
 
The Union Leader has weighed in with an editorial about the proposed fee for the Sherman Adams building.

They suggest the Cog and Obs (not the state or Auto Road) do the heavy lifting to generate the required revenue.

The editorial concludes with:

... is the state also planning on charging tourists to use its roadside rest areas? What an image that would present: Welcome to New Hampshire. There’s a fee to pee.
 
IMHO, the entry fee issue is tip toeing around the elephant in room which is the Cog has substantially increased the number of people on the summit and plans continuing to do so in the future. The existing waste water disposal systems were not designed for the current usage and need to be upgraded and someone has to pay for it. The logical parties to pay for the upgrade are the businesses that make their living moving customers to the summit. They obviously do not want to shoulder the burden so the logical approach is come up with an approach that gets a lot of bad publicity and hope they can guilt the state or someone in congress to fund the needed work. Sure I hear the hikers should pay their way concept but I really wonder what the real usage statistics are?. My guess hikers are a very small but visible minority compared to the steady stream of cars and vans up the autoroad and the ever increasing passenger cars coming up via the cog. The cog last year applied to substantially increase their passenger infrastructure on the summit a year ago as their claim was it was limiting their ability to load and unload increased numbers of passengers. They have stated that long range is put in second track top to bottom to further increase capacity.
 
The Mt Washington Commission Website https://www.nhstateparks.org/about-us/commissions-committees/mount-washington-commission has a few PDFs on the rational and details on the proposed fee. Jeb Bradley chaired a virtual meeting recently but the minutes are not on the website yet. The Berlin Daily Sun (paywall) has some details on the meeting today. There appears to have been a lot of questions and not a lot of answers but maybe the minutes when they are released in several weeks will get cover them,

They do give statistics on projected summit uses.

Based on their hourly use the cog has 30% of the visitors, 58% for the auto road and 6% for hikers. So adding the cog and the autoroad the total commercial operations are 88% of the usage. My guess is the autoroad usage is more spread out while the cog usage spikes when each train discharges its passengers. They project 80,000 hikers per year @$4 per head is $320,000 a year potential revenue if the hikers elect to go into the building. THey did indicate that they will need to provide some sort of free accommodations at the summit for those who do not want to pay to go inside.

See corrected numbers below
 
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If 80,000 hikers account for 6% of the usage, that would mean that total projected usage is about 1.3 million. I doubt that is correct.
 
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You are right, I will redo the math I picked the wrong denominator when I was doing the percentages. Note the hourly calculations are used for determining peak use. Therefore you cant equate peak hour use to yearly use
https://www.nhstateparks.org/getmed...9dea-de85dc283464/MWSP-revenue-attendance.pdf

They did not use the same format for each use, hikers are based on 5 hours of use while cog is based on 10 hours and they do not state how many hours for the autoroad.

Max Hourly Cog - 280 from pdf
Autoroad Hourly - 525 from pdf
Hikers hourly - 53 from pdf
Total Hourly - 853 (I added them up)
Cog 32%
Autoroad 62%
Hikers 6%

Total summit usage 315,000 with hikers at 80,000 (25%). They do not break out if the hiker usage is the summit museum or the summit in general.

Of course the Cog has stated that they plan to increase volume substantially going forward ultimately by adding a second complete track. I do not think they can double ridership with this change as they now have automated switches and sidings but there will be an increase. They claimed in front of the Coos County Planning board last year that they currently are limited by peak unload and loading capability at the summit and had proposed to substantially increase that capability by reclaiming long abandoned track within the state owned summit circle. They can not pursue that project unless the state signs off and the autoroad has objected as the Cog expansion would impact the autoroad guests access to the summit and in general complicate operations at the summit as the road to the summit circle used for supplies and handicapped access would be pinched down substantially.

Mike Pelchat when he was manager had observed that the existing wastewater disposal system had problems with surge use especially in early season. The biological systems in the system are temperature dependent and expand or contract their population dependent on usage. The "bugs are less active in cold conditions so early season weekends tend to overwhelm the system as the "bugs" are not adequately present to process the weekend surge in wasteflow. He was advocating opening the summit building to hikers on a limited basis prior to the autoroad or cog to slowly ramp up waste volume to get the system ready for the big surges when the cog and autoroad open. At some point the bugs are not the limiting factor, there are usually settling chambers to allow solids to drop out of the waste stream, if the surge flows exceed design velocity, solids get swept into the secondary treatment portion of the system that is designed for liquids and this can permanently reduce the capacity of the system.

The cog has announced they are going to be running to summit earlier but I am do not know how the logistics would work as the summit operations are predominantly supported by the autoroad. The cog did announce two years ago that they were considering building a "potty car" to haul up to the summit. I do not know if they did but presume it was just a way of getting around having to shoulder capital costs for upgrades at the summit.
 
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peakbagger said:
Total summit usage 315,000 with hikers at 80,000 (25%). They do not break out if the hiker usage is the summit museum or the summit in general.
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The Cog and The Auto Road can provide accurate numbers of users. Even if not, the capacity of the train and parking lots along with average number of riders per car can provide a decent estimate. The same cannot be said for hikers. A Cog rider with a backpack could be counted as a hiker... I imagine some significant number of non-hiking visitors would have a pack for extra layers, food, water, etc. The "Dad Pack" as it used to be called in my house ;)

Tim
 
I agree that the numbers for hikers are just a stab in the dark. My guess is if in doubt overestimate hiker numbers. The Cog owner has been vocal in the past that the hikers are major user of resources on the summit that are not contributing to the summit operations. Since the Cog stopped paying the voluntary fee to the obs, I havent heard them complaining about hikers.

It is interesting that in theory roughly half the hikers heading to the summit are coming from the west side of the mountain with many funneled past LOC. So LOC may be hosting 40,000 hikers a year through their wastewater disposal system. No doubt if they charged $4 a head there would be major pushback.
 
peakbagger said:
I agree that the numbers for hikers are just a stab in the dark. My guess is if in doubt overestimate hiker numbers. The Cog owner has been vocal in the past that the hikers are major user of resources on the summit that are not contributing to the summit operations. Since the Cog stopped paying the voluntary fee to the obs, I havent heard them complaining about hikers.

It is interesting that in theory roughly half the hikers heading to the summit are coming from the west side of the mountain with many funneled past LOC. So LOC may be hosting 40,000 hikers a year through their wastewater disposal system. No doubt if they charged $4 a head there would be major pushback.
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What are you basing this on? I would guess that a significant majority of hikers on Mt Washington are staying in towns like Conway and driving up rte 16 to Pinkham Notch, rather than detouring to the Cog base. Certainly Lion's Head trail has been much more crowded than Amonoosuc any time I've been on either one.
 
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