DocMcHulk
Well-Known Member
It's more than 3 hours by car if you do the speed limit. I;ve driven it a few times. It's a minimum of 4 hours.
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Disney gets on board with fast-train proposal
- Thread starter disfan411
- Start date
It's more than 3 hours by car if you do the speed limit. I;ve driven it a few times. It's a minimum of 4 hours.
JEANYLASER
Well-Known Member
that will be awesome!
unkadug
Follower of "Saget"The Cult
What? It's failure?
With over 200 replies to this thread, I'm curious as to what you think is awesome. :shrug:
gamblepsu
Active Member
It's not Complete flawed logic; depending on what you do to alleviate traffic bottlenecks, there is a strong possibility that a new one will develop somewhere further down the road (heh).
PirateFrank
Well-Known Member
No. you're adding another factor. KISS, Keep it simple stupid (not calling you stupid, just quoting the phrase)....
You're suggesting that a bottleneck can't be fixed because there's *another* bottleneck down the road. That's not logical. If you fix one bottleneck, and another develops down the road, you never had one bottleneck. You had two all along.
Once you increase capacity to the point where no points along the system are bottlenecked and there is sufficient excess during normal increases, you have solved the problem.
The fact of the matter is that state, federal and local governments are afraid to do this, because the very reason they keep highways small enough for bottlenecks is to discourage additional road traffic.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Robert Moses spent years adding capacity to the highways in and around New York City. No project ever decreased congested, the old roads became more congested and the new ones became congested as well. The new roads have a strong tendency to encourage more traffic than they are designed to handle. It is a self perpetuating cycle in which only huge swaths of land have to constantly be dedicated to new and expanded roads. This is all on top of the issues caused by having to build this big roads, which displace people and cut up neighborhoods; taking with them a sense of community, local culture, businesses, jobs, etc.
googilycub
Active Member
Railroads do the same thing........I have spent more time then I ever want to on the head end of a train. Go through the city of Chicago, which required railroads to elevate their tracks in the city limits, which created a a barrier to the local neighborhoods. There are places where one side of the fill is full of well to do homes, nice parks and so on. The other side of the fill has seen better days. Switching the way public transports itself to railroads will not fix these issues, nor will it make much of a dent in road capacity issues.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Excellent points! There's a reason why the phrase "Wrong Side Of The Tracks" got started, and still exists as a way to express how railroad tracks form social and economic barriers in communities. And those railroad tracks are only accesible to people who bought a ticket to ride on that specific vehicle, whereas a road is open to anyone who has access to feet or 2 or 4 wheels.
The splicing and dicing of communities by railroad tracks can be minimized with newer design standards, but it takes a heck of a lot of money. Here's a picture of what California High Speed Rail will look like in north Anaheim, a mile or two from Disneyland, once they go to great expense to bury existing streets and build new tracks on bridges above them.
Currently the train tracks travel at street level in Anaheim, and lighted signals stop all auto traffic whenever a Metrolink or Amtrak Surfliner pass by, which is several dozen times per day on that busy Orange County line.
GrumpyFan
Well-Known Member
I don't know that I buy into that. Sure, there are plenty of examples where there are differences on one side of the tracks compared to the other, but how is the the railroad's fault? It's not like they or somebody from the government made it that way, it's just how things got divided. These divisions exist in other places too, where there isn't a railroad. So, to blame the railroad is just silly.
I'm not an environmentalist tree hugger, but I do think that we need to bring transportation into the 21st century all around this country. The automobile is great, I have two. But, we have to face facts that our cities are all continuing to grow and there are only so many cars that can be put into so much space (I think this has something to do with physics). But, the point is, we need to start now, looking for better, more efficient, cleaner and perhaps safer means of moving people en masse. We can't just keep paving more and more roads. If we fail to plan for and prepare for a future with more people who want to be more and more mobile, then we will suffer the consequences or, our children will.
Very well said, Sir.....
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
My understanding of the Flroida project is a desire to use existing right of way as much as possible. Then there is the capacity per width required.
googilycub
Active Member
I would bet on the divison happining as a result of the railroad being there. One thing I have noticed is that the less well to do area is usually down wind of the railroad. Think what the railroads used for motive power until the 1950s, steam locomotives. Steam locomotives belched not only smoke, coal fired ones would spit hot cinders out of its smoke stack. Nobody would want that on their wash line, or blowing into their windows. Add in the fact that up until the 1960s livestock was for the most part shipped by rail. Anyone who has been near a farm in the summer knows how that smells. People who could afford to did not live downwind of the railroad.
These new high speed railroads will need to build their new right of ways thru towns just as a new highway would. There are some places where the HSR could be built on an abandon railroad right of way, but that is not always the case.
Also, no matter what your elected official may tell you, these high speed trains have no place on existing freight railroad trackage...:brick:
JungleTrekFan
Active Member
The plan is to have most of the HSR line going down the median of I-4 which is wide enough for the tracks and wont have to worry about cars or pedestrians crossing the tracks.
What I dont get is how they are going to put the stations in the median, if that's what there doing.
googilycub
Active Member
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
A lot of people seem to not understand how high speed rail works. It is about connecting a few points that are separated by distance, not connected a bunch of points along a distance. The idea is to link Orlando and Tampa with each other, not Orlando, Tampa and everything else in between. Building stations in the median is not a big issue because the stations will be in the cities and, even if some are still within, above or below the median, they will be few in number.
There are always going to be wealthier neighborhoods. The reason uptown is usually more affluent is because it is upriver, so there were less people pouring their waste and trash into the river when it go to you.
JungleTrekFan
Active Member
I know that, but where the proposed WDW station is suppose to be the median is barely wide enough for 2 tracks let alone a station. Im wondering how there going to put a station there. Are the tracks going to cross over I-4 onto the land disney gave to them? Cause that seems like it would be very expensive and an inconvenience.
fillerup
Well-Known Member
Couple of updates.......
Tampa voters soundly defeated a one cent sales tax increase to fund bus and road improvements as well as build light rail. This is not good for high speed rail.
Florida's incoming governor Rick Scott (I'm no fan) has promised to put the high speed rail project on hold.
It's time to shovel the dirt back into this bottomless money pit. The wildly optimistic ridership projections make the Florida DOT worthy of it's own dark ride in Fantasyland.
An interesting read from O'Sentinel blogger Beth Kassab:
High-speed scenarios too costly
"As I'm clicking through the survey, I want to answer yes.
But question after question about whether I would take a high-speed rail line between Orlando and Tampa, I find myself answering no.
In eight scenarios laid out by the survey from the Florida Department of Transportation, the price of riding the train is too high to make it practical.
The cheapest train option the survey gave me included a $27 one-way ticket and a $5 fee to park my car at the station at Orlando International Airport. That would put my round-trip total at $63, including $4 in bus fares to get me to and from my final destination in Tampa."
Full Article
Here's a link if you want to take the survey or just see the various projected costs for yourself.
Transportation Survey
Tampa voters soundly defeated a one cent sales tax increase to fund bus and road improvements as well as build light rail. This is not good for high speed rail.
Florida's incoming governor Rick Scott (I'm no fan) has promised to put the high speed rail project on hold.
It's time to shovel the dirt back into this bottomless money pit. The wildly optimistic ridership projections make the Florida DOT worthy of it's own dark ride in Fantasyland.
An interesting read from O'Sentinel blogger Beth Kassab:
High-speed scenarios too costly
"As I'm clicking through the survey, I want to answer yes.
But question after question about whether I would take a high-speed rail line between Orlando and Tampa, I find myself answering no.
In eight scenarios laid out by the survey from the Florida Department of Transportation, the price of riding the train is too high to make it practical.
The cheapest train option the survey gave me included a $27 one-way ticket and a $5 fee to park my car at the station at Orlando International Airport. That would put my round-trip total at $63, including $4 in bus fares to get me to and from my final destination in Tampa."
Full Article
Here's a link if you want to take the survey or just see the various projected costs for yourself.
Transportation Survey
HSR makes more sense in California, where there are numerous destinations that could benefit from it. Exactly why would anyone go from Tampa to Orlando (or vice-versa)? Florida isn't a pedestrian nirvana, so locals won't want to give up their cars. That pricing is too high...how much time would actually be saved by the traveller?
Tampa to Orlando never quite made that much sense for me either. Miami-Orlando always seemed to be more appropriate for a HSR line.....