Mount Rainier National Park will receive more than $106,000 to operate a shuttle bus system this summer.

The funds come from the Paul S. Sarbanes Transit in the Parks program overseen by the U.S. Department of Transportation. More than $40.4 million was awarded for projects that address increasing vehicle congestion in and around national parks and other federal lands.

Mount Rainier will use the funds to lease seven shuttle buses and operate the Paradise-area shuttle system during the summer season to help transport visitors throughout the park.

The shuttles run on weekends, with one bus running from Ashford to Longmire and four buses running from Longmire to Paradise. When the need arises, buses are used on the Paradise Valley Road.

The shuttle system began in 2006, when construction of the new Henry M. Jackson Memorial Visitor Center and seismic retrofit of Paradise Inn took up much of the park space at Paradise.

The park will use entrance-fee money to pay the rest of the program, said Eric Walkinshaw, the park’s civil engineer. The total cost to provide the buses is $240,000. Another $40,000 for park costs to hire a couple of extra rangers to help with traffic control, he said.

Elsewhere in Washington, Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge will receive $200,000 next year for a planning study for pedestrian access. The funds will be used to conduct an alternative transportation planning study to develop safe pedestrian route between downtown Ridgefield and the refuge in Southwest Washington.

BLASTING AWAY AT DAM

Explosives were used Jan. 26 to further whittle down the Glines Canyon Dam, lowering it by about six feet. Another detonation is planned for this month.

With just more than 40 vertical feet of the dam now removed, the reservoir level has dropped considerably, making the right side (when looking downstream) of the dam harder for the barge and excavator-mounted hydraulic hammer to reach, said a news release. As an alternative, contractors therefore employed controlled blasting to remove this far right-side portion of the dam.

For more information and images, check out nps.gov/olym/naturescience/dam-removal-blog.htm.

Shuttle ridership

Year Riders

200615,028

2007 18,254

2008 10,213

2009 30,202

2010 25,346

2011 26,479