Travel in the season of grandstanding

September 23, 2015 8:33 PM

My parents, siblings and our families are set to converge on the Grand Canyon from Oct. 8-12 for an annual reunion. The plans and reservations were made late last year, and some are flying or traveling by amtrak, though myself and my family will drive from a few hours away. How worried should we be about a potential government shutdown? If it does happen Oct. 1st, is there any lag time before National Parks and similar agencies would cease operations, or would that be immediate? Should we cancel preemptively? I'm hopeful we don't have to do that, but if so, we all plan to donate the cash we'd have spent there to Planned Parenthood.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! to Travel & Transportation (6 answers total)

Hi, I work for a natural resource agency, but not NPS. If there is a shut-down, many if not all government employees will report to work on 10/1 to go through the process of an orderly shut-down.

All of us will be furloughed (with some rare 'excepted' employees who work in critical areas like me - mostly emergency response, but also things like law enforcement and the guy that feeds the animals at the petting zoo are excepted, because, you know, those goats gotta get fed). We will be given paperwork on unemployment. Our equipment will be locked up and secured. We will be escorted off the premises. The vast majority of federal employees will be gone by noon 10/1.

NPS has a very practiced and effective closure plan. There will not be a lag, and unlike other natural resource agencies, it is pretty easy to close off the major NPS areas - gates locked. And some of their excepted employees will be LEI, there to escort stragglers out of the parks. There are no exceptions (unless Congress makes one) - we literally are closed for business and none of us can conduct anything other than emergency business during that time.

I wouldn't cancel preemptively. Right now, we're preparing across the government, but we don't know anything more than you do. I think you have decent odds that your vacation will be unaffected - either there will be no shutdown, or the shutdown will be very brief. Personally, I'm guessing we have a 1/3 chance of a shutdown. Fingers crossed (for our economy, for the American people, for our ability to carry out our missions safely and effectively) we won't shut down.
posted by arnicae at 8:51 PM on September 23, 2015 [10 favorites]

I know that during the last shutdown, the Blue Ridge Parkway's various visitor centres closed immediately. The Parkway itself stayed open -- it's gated shut in bad weather, but it's not a typical national park. That said, had there been a rockfall or some other road safety issue, then segments would have been closed straight away.

The amount of time and money wasted on having to prepare for shutdowns ought to damn those who seek shutdowns while claiming to represent small government and fiscal prudence.
posted by holgate at 9:18 PM on September 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

Historically the Grand Canyon in particular has opened sometimes during national shutdowns with state or private funds. I do not know the likelihood of this happening in a possible Oct 1 shutdown, nor do I know how long it would take, but it has happened before.
posted by nat at 9:59 PM on September 23, 2015

It's unlikely at this point that we'll get a shutdown. It's really a rare thing, and even though the most recent one happened exactly at the end of the fiscal year, that's not necessarily how it would go this time around. The Clinton-era shutdowns started in mid-November, for instance. By far the most likely scenario is a continuing resolution that kicks the budgetary can down the road a month or two.
Amtrak, because it's not actually a part of the government, will be fine in the event of a shutdown.
posted by wnissen at 10:25 PM on September 23, 2015

Another government employee here, although not a Park Service employee. Last time (and for that matter, the time before too), we shut down effective immediately: everyone except "critical" people were told to just stay home and not even come in. There were some folks who had to shut down operations, but as a rule we weren't even allowed to enter our workplaces. (The exceptions were ones like military service members, first responders and yeah, the folks who feed the zoo animals, who were all required to keep working the whole time but weren't paid during the shutdown.) All facilities were shut to visitors immediately, no delay.

That said, I am somewhat-hopeful that they won't pull that again this time, but there's no way to know positively at this point, sorry.
posted by easily confused at 1:18 AM on September 24, 2015

Response by poster: Thanks to everyone for your input. Vacations can be rescheduled, but hearing from a few govt. employees makes me even madder that you could be facing weeks without getting paid. Grrrr!
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 6:21 AM on September 24, 2015