Proposed Administration Fee for Summit Building on Mt Washington

[DayTrip]

IMHO, The cog and auto road will just raise their rates to cover their guests. Hikers have a choice, they can pay to play or not use the facilities at the summit. As far as I know there will be no fee to stand at the summit sign. Folks climb Adams and Lafayette without a snack bar, water and sanitary facilities.

That would seem to make the most sense. When a Cog or Shuttle passenger gets to summit building they shown their ticket and walk in because their fee was included in the ticket. If you hiked up and want to use the building you buy a day pass. I don't see what the huge deal is. All you have to do is stand in there on a SAT afternoon to see how much use those facilities get. I personally hate the summit building and rarely use it. Having to pay to use it would just about guarantee I'll never go in there again but I'm sure plenty of hikers would pay a nominal fee to do it.

 

[DayTrip]

Everything of material value has a cost. If you don't pay for it, that just means that someone else is paying for it.

Truth. Amazing how many people don't get that.

 

[ChrisB]

Well said. Time to kick out Jeb and put ChrisB in charge.

"If nominated I will not run. If elected....etc. etc."

I really don't get Jeb. He's starting his second round of the Grid but can't get past his ideological leanings for F&G and other outdoor funding.

 

[maineguy]

You do so to climb Katahdin in Baxter Park. Why not Mt Washington?

Not if you're a Maine resident

 

[peakbagger]

It does not cost anything to climb Katahdin, the fee paid by out of state residents is a road fee for auto access to the road system.

 

[JustJoe]

So I really enjoy a coke with my sandwich, when I hike Washington. Certainly not paying $10 for one. Fee plus the 60% markup on the coke.

I'm not well versed in all of this so excuse any stupid questions.

The Cog, and Auto road are privately owned, correct? The Sherman Adams building is NH State Park, yes? So say but the cog and road add $5 dollars to there tickets and that supposedly gets them in. How's that going to work? Someone will have to use 2 different counters for both at the entrance? Then the cog and road will reimburse that in a lump sum? Daily, Weekly, monthly, etc.? That doesn't sound feasible. The point I'm getting at is if everyone will be paying $5 to get in, how many people will say screw it and not go in. Which in turn could actually cause them to loose money.

 

[Mike P.]

It is certainly worth remembering that the Summit is indeed a NH State Park. And as such charging an entrance fee is reasonable. The Cog and Auto Road can easily bake such a fee into their charges. But what to do about hikers????

In a prefect and well-funded world maybe hikers would not have to pay. In the real world in which our under-funded state parks operate hikers should pay.

You do so to climb Katahdin in Baxter Park. Why not Mt Washington?

The irony of the Live Free or Die state is that due to its funding model nothing is ever really "free."

While the Katahdin Vs. Washington comparison is fair, since the park is supposed to be forever wild, per Baxter's request when he gave the state the land, I gladly pay for the ability to hike in BSP without the summit building, the road to the top and the train to the top.

It's the main reason why for me when you talk favorites in the east, there's Katahdin, and then there is everything else. (Haystack is second but closer to third and 3-??? is interchangeable)

 

[peakbagger]

User pays makes sense to me, I really would not want to subsidize visitors to the summit of Mt Washington so that they can use the facilities when a major percentage of them are being delivered by commercial entities. If hikers want the services they pay for them. In theory the concessions would not cost as much as currently they are the major source of subsidy for the summit building.

 

[dave.m]

IMO, fees for parks is always a bad thing.

More broadly, I'm surprised at how thoroughly the radical political economic theory of neo-liberal austerity is accepted.

The Federal and State governments are empowered to provide for the common good and to pay for such things through taxation. This is a good thing and we can thank Hamilton (among others) for establishing this. The US economy, like nearly all modern economies, is a mixed economy with some things provided as tax-funded common goods through the public sector and others provided as fee for service through the private sector.

The radical goal of neoliberal economics is eliminate as much of the public sectors as possible through either outright elimination of the services or by transferring them to the private sector - a process called austerity. For those of us around in the 90s, we can recall that Bush slashed USFS funds targeting funds for recreation. USFS memos confirmed the point was to create a budget crises in the USFS to force the public to accept fee for services (such as parking fees) as a first step towards transferring operations away from the USFS to private concessions.

Accept fee for use access to the state park facility on the summit and in 10 years time, expect that the Cog and/or the Auto Road will claim they can operate the facility better as a private concession now that the public has accepted it as a fee for use service. Let them do that for 10 or 20 years and they will claim there's no need for them to lease the land from the state and instead, they should just buy it.

The freeloaders here aren't the hikers seeking hot chocolate and hot dogs. It's the Auto Road and Cog Railway whose businesses would seek to be profitable without there being a warm building open to visitors at the top.

 

[dave.m]

In a prefect and well-funded world maybe hikers would not have to pay. In the real world in which our under-funded state parks operate hikers should pay.

Whose "real world" are we talking about?

If we lived in a democracy, the world would be as we the people decide to make it. Many countries and many states provide real world college educations and health care (and free access to parks) to their citizens all funded through taxes with no fee for service. That's real world, just not our world.

Note, I don't for a minute think we live in a democracy so I understand to some degree just accepting whatever comes our way as an inevitability beyond our collective control.

 

[maineguy]

Hikers of the world unite!

 

[Mike P.]

Hikers of the world unite!

But I see more wildlife when I hike alone....

 

[DayTrip]

I noticed on the summit SAT that there is now a water spigot outside on the Nelson Crag side of the summit building entrance so you won't need to go indoors anymore to get water if you are a hiker. Not sure how long it has been there. Been up there 7 times in past 3 months but this was the first time I noticed it.