Disneyland cannot depend on public transportation. Yes, building more roads in cities creates more traffic. But Disneyland's business model depends on quick accessibility and convenience and time savings that public transportation does not allow. Like an airport, a vast number of people need to be able to drive there on their own terms and in full control. It is not a place that people can afford to waste time getting to and making mistakes and depending upon other variables. The introduction of new variables, surprises, and inefficiencies in the arrival / pre-arrival sequence to what is supposed to be an experience that sells pleasure will dramatically negatively impact the overall experience. In cities (not saying that Anaheim isn't a city, but the majority of traffic on its city streets in that area are serving Disneyland) I support making driving more difficult and encouraging more walking, biking, local trips to commerce and services, and public transportation. Cities that already have alternative public infrastructure in place make living without a car incredibly easy, a no-brainer. In people's daily lives, such inconveniences encourage people to cut down on road use, live closer to work, or look for alternative modes of transportation. But in Los Angeles, this just is not a realistic option. LA is spending some 40 billion dollars to build new public transportation. It is incredibly expensive and will take decades to complete. Los Angeles and its greater region is still a car-centric one, and it is far easier for Disneyland to spend a few hundred million private dollars on a parking garage that is compatible with the region's connectivity and transportation preferences than it is to wait for the day that may never come when access from throughout the region is faster and more convenient than car travel, or to put pressure on local government to spend public dollars on a transportation system that will benefit a private enterprise. Disney made itself public enemy number one in Anaheim when they got the city to fund the resort district enhancements; imagine how widespread the animosity will be if new tax increases go through at the county, regional, or state levels to fund transportation projects that Disney helped design, encouraged, or put political pressure on our elected officials to benefit from. Even if there are more beneficiaries in that scenario than Disney and it serves the greater good, people will always remember the narrative that a massive corporation encouraged the use of public dollars for private benefit.
Essentially, my opinion is that the difference between urban transportation planning and the introduction of those tactics to the Disneyland Resort area is that a visit to Disneyland is optional, while navigating city streets to get to work, buy groceries, and seek other services is vital to survival. People will endure inconveniences and change their behavior to mitigate them when their survival depends on it. Introduce any more inconveniences to arriving to Disneyland, and people will choose to avoid the mess altogether. So much of the traffic on the streets in that area are related to Disneyland, and while enabling traffic in cities through expanded freeways that were intended to relieve traffic actually enable longer commutes and development in the long term that create more traffic, by making travel more feasible and tolerable momentarily, there is an upper limit to how many cars can be attracted to Disneyland. At some point, attendance levels off. And furthermore, I seriously doubt it will have any role in increasing traffic. Why? Because traffic to Disneyland is not caused by the ease of access to Disneyland and its nearby infrastructure; it is caused directly by demand for Disneyland. Demand is increasing, and Star Wars Land will continue to drive that growth in demand. People arriving to Disneyland by car are not considering other modes of transportation, and they aren't considering the location of parking. They simply arrive and go where they are directed. Building more conveniently located lots will relieve that chaos of chasing resort parking through the public way and keep the cars attracted to the area specifically for Disneyland closer to their final destination. Building transportation connectivity to off-site parking like the Angels Stadium area creates no benefits at a massive expense. People will still drive, they would just be driving 2.5 miles east and leave their cars further away before being bused in on expensive and wasteful transportation systems with only two destinations. Without ubiquitous transit use at the regional level, and heavy or high speed rail running down the 5, in which case people won't need to drive and won't need parking garages, all Disney would accomplish by making parking less convenient or moving it elsewhere is expanding the sprawl and reach of Disneyland's infrastructure into nearby communities. That would be far more politically disastrous, taking viable commercial and residential areas off the table that could serve local community needs, making even more real communities LESS walkable and actually creating conditions that encourage even more traffic by placing massive square mile heat island asphalt parking lots that do not serve them in between them and everything else in their communities. Transit works best when trips to the station are less than a half mile; In Chicago, where I am from, many stops along the Blue Line are placed in the center landscaped divider of the highway. The ramps to access said stations are already 1/3 of a mile, making the stations conveniently accessible to a far smaller population (those living within .5 mile - .33 miles or .17 miles). Using 1/2 mile as the upper limit for choosing to take transit or even for walking to and from a grocery store or similar service without using a private automobile, we can support all of the arguments that I have just made.
1. Disneyland won't be able to depend on public transportation until it is efficiently networked both locally and regionally, with a station within a half mile of every resident of the greater Los Angeles region; such a plan would cost nearly a trillion dollars in public funding or result in a dramatic rezoning and reorientation of the city concentrating all housing and services within a half mile of a more limited distribution of transit locations, which is entirely unrealistic and would take a hundred years to achieve.
2. In the absence of this ubiquitous public transportation, making driving to Disneyland less convenient or redistributing that parking to far-off lots will simply redistribute Disneyland parking to farther away locations, illogically placing it in the way of unrelated communities, without cutting down on the overall supply of parking and creating demand for infrastructure connecting Disneyland to those lots. Places like the hollywood bowl benefit from such systems, because their locations dictate it; they are in topographical or urban areas that cannot accommodate parking with a closer proximity to their venues. The use of off-site parking is unavoidable. This could also discourage visits to Disneyland altogether.
3. Pushing Disneyland parking into areas completely unrelated to Disneyland creates all harm and no benefits to people in those communities. Again, with the walkability threshold for the sake of this argument being the classic 1/2 mile, having a parking lot in people's communities that does not serve them prevents businesses, services, and residences from occupying that 1/2 mile threshold, and pushes those services farther away. Residents will be less likely to walk around that alien wasteland of a parking lot, which will surely take up a half mile to a full mile depending on if people have to walk along one or more of its sides, which will force that particular community to drive more, creating more traffic for local trips, traffic that will mix with disneyland traffic.
As for the security perimeter, Disney is totally justified in their decision to expand it. Their "mall cops" are guarding the only non-federal property in the United States to have been granted the FAA no fly zone status that federal buildings share after 9/11. We talk about it like it is "just an amusement park," but clearly, it is far more than that. It is essentially a physical manifestation of the Post-War American Dream. It so perfectly represents our commercial and corporate culture and our individualistic values to the extent that Parisians treated Disneyland Paris as cultural imperialism in the nineties. They likely have a lot of security infrastructure that we know nothing about and receive threats we never hear of. If they think that pushing the security checkpoints further from their expensive assets on the resort grounds will improve their ability to protect their assets and the park guests, then so be it.
The entire approach is very short, and is in that odd phase of being close enough and short enough to be walkable for park guests, but longer enough from what is there to upset people and adjacent businesses, and still too short to make a people mover or tram system feasible or necessary. How often do we see people complaining about their walk from the Disneyland Hotel or the Paradise Pier Hotel? These distances are similar or even farther, but I assume that a vast majority of those paying $400+ a night for rooms "on site" aren't taking the monorail and don't psychologically feel like they are off property or far away from the park entrances. There is a lot of anxiety about a loss of traffic to these businesses, but the share of that loss has never been measured or proven, and the security perimeter is still within 300 feet of their businesses, arguably closer than it ever was. The anxiety of local businesses, rather than actual guests, is what is driving this opposition. Guests are free to agree with the assessment, but ultimately it is a concern raised by people with a profit motive. Pedestrians likely would never think twice about the new approach, but the unsubstantiated uproar by the local businesses has armed the public with a vocabulary and list of arguments that they can then agree with and echo.
Concessions on Disney's Part
1. I think that opening the back wall that divides the adjacent hotels to the security checkpoint rather than routing everybody south, east, and back north is an option that ought to be considered.
2. Moving walkways like those found in airport terminals will give those who don't want to walk the option not to, leaving the restaurants along Harbor as the only stakeholders lacking a reconciliation from Disney.
3. If Disney builds onto the bridge an "exit only" stairwell and elevator, guests will be able to move freely from the bridge to street-facing restaurants, restoring most of the demand and accessibility. If they find a way to add a security check for pedestrians onto the bridge from Harbor, then all the problems raised by those opposing stakeholders will be resolved.
4. Introducing foot traffic from Harbor to the bridge means
a. keeping security closer to the gates without making many other adjustments to the plan,
b. adding a security check where DCA's expansion is set to go, cutting into the park's development square footage at the expense of guest experience, or
c. dividing the bridge with a wall like the Newark airport terminals so that the majority of guests entering through the sprawling security checkpoint near the parking garage and people returning to it are funneled into one half of the bridge, while those joining the bridge from harbor are isolated and funneled through a separate checkpoint on top of or just past the bridge.
d. Widening the bridge to accommodate a security checkpoint and access for harbor blvd pedestrians could work, but would ultimately lead to a bridge taking up air rights wider than the two private properties owned by Disney that the current bridge connects. Could you imagine a smaller hotel operator being okay with their street frontage and facade facing a new bridge serving Disney, even if it will exist to serve them, ironically? Objectively would it be any uglier than a sprawling arterial road? People will want the access without the dramatic changes.
I can only speak to my perspective, experiences, and solutions. I believe the parking structure is necessary, the bridge will save lives and prevent a rare catastrophic incident involving pedestrians and a vehicle running a stop light, and the security perimeter is understandable, but likely the most negotiable component of this plan. The approach looks permanent, nice, and spacious. I just hope that Disney finds some room for negotiation so that they can get moving on this project, and I appreciate everybody's ideas and perspectives on the matter. I would hate for it to lead to cancellation of DCA park plans or other resort development, as local and corporate politics have so often in the past.
