lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Looking at the county’s interactive mapping, Osceola Parkway crosses over to Disney property just east of the parking lot for Disney’s Animal Kingdom. I don’t know if there aren’t other agreements, easements, etc. in play but the rest of it is shown as being on District right of way. How are incidents on that stretch handles? Why would it be different than hitting a pot hole next door at Orange Lake?Definitely true.
But, can you imagine Osceola Parkway being a private road instead? Push the entrance gates all the way out to the I4 exit ramps. Or, Buena Vista Dr or World Drive?
Way back when, Disney would have needed to keep ownership of all those roads and not transfer them to RCID. Now that they have, transferring them back to Disney would be difficult. Probably not impossible, but nobody has proposed that.
Likewise, wasn't there a recent project that added dedicated Disney bus lanes to some of these roads? If they were private roads, that would still work. But, if they were public maintained by the county, I cannot imagine the county deciding to add dedicated lanes for just one business was a good plan. I suppose they could have done it as toll lanes. Just charged a few million in tolls to cover the cost.....
Similarly, there's probably a bunch of liability differences that come into play. Today, if two cars get into an accident on World Drive and one of them blames a pot hole for causing the accident. It's a public roadway. If World Drive had never been turned into a public road, but was still a private road, is that more like an accident in a parking lot then?
Imagine if all the RCID owned land was still Disney owned land. One huge all private land continuous parcel with private everything. That would give some new meaning to being in the Disney bubble.
I believe the Lynx buses and other hotel buses also use the bus lanes on Buena Vista Dr. The same reason it would have been a problem for a county to build lanes for a private company would have made it a problem for the District to build bus lanes just for Disney. That said, the Kidman Rd extension is also getting bus lanes and that is very much at the behest of Universal Orlando Resort which will use them to transport guests between the north and south campuses. Like Buena Vista Dr, other buses (and Florida drivers) will use the lanes, but most of the traffic is sure to be one company’s buses.