Changes at Mt Rainier -- road closed Tues, Weds

Yeah because that's going to be well attended by the people who use the park  :

Andrew Carey if you go tell them you officially represent all of TAY, because no one else could make it to Asford by 4:00 on a Tuesday. Also, notice which two days of the week they are holding them on.

Yeah because that's going to be well attended by the people who use the park  :

Andrew Carey if you go tell them you officially represent all of TAY, because no one else could make it to Asford by 4:00 on a Tuesday.  Also, notice which two days of the week they are holding them on.

I think anyone who claimed to be representing all of TAY (or any other bc group) would be open to setting themselves up for a verbal lynching LOL

The park's justifications for this no-warning royal proclamation seem to boil down to low visitation and insufficient funding, but it really is just a matter of priorities, IMO.  The low visitation is a self-inflicted wound; they have alienated their natural winter constituency through unreliable openings and poor communication for twenty years. This past Thanksgiving I asked at the VC desk if chains were still required to descend, since the road had mostly melted out during the day.  The uniformed employee kindly and efficiently called and double-checked for me, but her initial comment stunned me:  "Oh, they never tell us when it changes."

No government bureaucracy ever thinks its funding is sufficient.  I realize the budget for the entire National Park Service is probably less than the rounding errors in some Pentagon projects, but for a sense of the National Park Service's twisted priorities and bloated, top-heavy management, check out:  www.schundler.net/PayScales.pdf

Public closure seems the favorite arrow in Rainier management's quiver. In 2006, that pricy new VC was so behind schedule and over budget (ultimately over ten times the initial estimates) that a 'Big Lie' six-month public closure of the entire park was required to finish it.  Management  wanted to close again for the entire winter in 2009 for relatively minor damage on Glacier Hill.  Every year they have money to repair the Westside Road for "administrative use", but public vehicles have been excluded for over two decades.  Most of you probably know the sad situation of recent years where Sunrise is kept closed for weeks after the road is plowed.

I'm not saying there wasn't flooding in November, 2006.  Park road crew and a local WA DOT supervisor all said the road repairs could have been made in "3-4 weeks, tops".  A press release put out the cover story that the months of delay were due to special-ordering a culvert from Arizona.  Contractors at the VC and their heavy trucks missed only a few days work; the park continued plowing for them until reopening. Their favorite, and most favored, concessioner RMI had access to Paradise for their guided trips while the public was forbidden to even walk across the park boundary.  Some rangers were overheard in local businesses bragging about skiing all winter!  Good for them, they deserved it then and perhaps more so now... 

The bottom line in 2006-07 was that completing their unnecessary new Visitor Center (open less than half the days of the year) was a higher priority than public access.  Even if the touted "green" design saves a million dollars a year (unlikely), it will still take 25 years to break even on the construction costs.  By then there may be impaired views from the building due to climate change forest growth, and the bureaucrats will probably be clammoring for a $100 million replacement VC.

One of my neighbors was park Road Foreman in the 70's.  He told stories of the 1947 mudflow at Kautz Ck (same place that washed out in 2006).  The USGS reports indicate at least ten times as much debris moved in '47 as in '06. Yet according to Ed, the repairs were done in-house in a few months without the multimillion dollar special appropriations the modern NPS needs just to get out of its own way!

....Even if the touted "green" design saves a million dollars a year...

Where are you getting those figures?  The Seattle PI article makes much more modest claims about fuel savings:

At current rates, that is an annual savings of $143,353, Mummart said. Given the building's expected life span of 50 years, the savings could top $7.1 million.

and about the cost of the new building

Friday's opening of the new Henry M. Jackson Memorial Visitor Center completes a nearly $50 million, nine-year transformation of Paradise at Mount Rainier National Park.

www.seattlepi.com/local/article/New-visi...Paradise-1287731.php

The old building was a mess in many ways -- I suppose one good thing about it was that the fuel guzzling "snow melt" roof design did force the NPS to keep the road open to supply it's 300-500 gallon per day thirst for diesel fuel. With the new JVC, the NPS could close the road in November and opening it in May without have the JVC crushed by the snow.

Thanks for your reply, Randy.  My million per year figure was just an example with convenient geezer math.  This article mentions a $22 M price tag; I've seen others (that I couldn't locate right away) that claimed $29 M:
www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2008/10/im...e-new-visitor-center
The higher figure might include demolishing the old VC.

If the 'savings' are indeed $7M in fifty years, doesn't that work out to over 150 years before they equal the construction costs?

I don't think cost savings was the primary justification for building a new building. The old building had a lot of problems with leaking pipes in the snow melt system and many other systems. I recall that the estimates for fixing the existing building were substantially higher than for building a new building. The old JVC was actually designed originally for use in Hawaii, so it really was a poor design for a location with 50 ft of snow per year. The fuel savings narrative makes better copy in the media than "the old building was a turkey that we are glad to be done with"