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Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

thetransitguy.substack.com

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Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#51

Post by bigthymer »

johng wrote: post #16

I still believe that if Dolly ran for President, she would win. She's probably one of the most liked people in the country, percentage wise. I've actually asked quite a few random people what they think of her and I've never met someone that had anything bad to say.

> I still believe that if Dolly ran for President, she would win. She's probably one of the most liked people in the country, percentage wise. I've actually asked quite a few random people what they think of her and I've never met someone that had anything bad to say.

All that would change the moment she decided to run (or maybe she could delay it until she got elected). The reason she maintains her popularity is that she generally stays out of politically divisive issues and that the media doesn't demonize her if she does dabble into one.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#52

Post by jandrese »

NoblePublius wrote: post #25

“ I love Disney and I love Dolly Parton, but it says something deeply broken about our national priorities when their theme park trains outclass public infrastructure in billion-dollar economies. Be serious.” Europe has lots of train infrastructure because it was very poor after WW2, and its people could afford nothing but train fare. America has lots of car infrastructure because it was very rich after WS2, and its…

> It’s not because American government doesn’t invest in public transit. It’s because Americans, even poor Americans, overwhelmingly choose personal transportation.

If there is no usable public transit then people have to use cars. But if they have cars then there isn't the will for the public transit. A vicious circle.

Public transit does need to be built somewhat on a "if you build it they will come" philosophy, which is hard when people want immediate returns on investment.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#53

Post by bobajeff »

chrisco255 wrote: post #20

Dollywood is great, but unfortunately the article gradually shifts into bashing Tennessee and America for not using enough passenger rail. That train left the station a long time ago. Car ownership is very high, sprawl is very high. We do not have urban cores with the same density or concentration of business districts as European or Asian cities. Most of the time buses make more sense for public transportation in Am…

Nashville really sucks when it comes to public transit in general. The reason ridership is so low is because it doesn't go where you need it to and it takes way way longer to get to the places it does go. Also traffic is very bad and always getting worse everytime I come back. It's pathetic and it deserves all the flak it gets and then some.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#54

Post by dylan604 »

hinkley wrote: post #32
chrisco255 wrote: post #20

Dollywood is great, but unfortunately the article gradually shifts into bashing Tennessee and America for not using enough passenger rail. That train left the station a long time ago. Car ownership is very high, sprawl is very high. We do not have urban cores with the same density or concentration of business districts as European or Asian cities. Most of the time buses make more sense for public transportation in Am…

We condensed redundancies in the 80’s to improve profit margins for rail. Those lines could have supported more cargo and passenger trains but they’re gone now. It’s difficult to add rail through populated areas. And some population centers are big enough that going around them is not feasible. Like you could go around Portland Oregon to add new west coast routes without much high profile eminent domain, but can you…

You can't do that through Texas which is why the plan for a high speed rail making the triangle between DFW, Houston, Austin/San Antonio never succeeds. There's so much wide open space in Texas, but it's privately owned so eminent domain is a huge issue.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#55

Post by amiga386 »

NoblePublius wrote: post #25

“ I love Disney and I love Dolly Parton, but it says something deeply broken about our national priorities when their theme park trains outclass public infrastructure in billion-dollar economies. Be serious.” Europe has lots of train infrastructure because it was very poor after WW2, and its people could afford nothing but train fare. America has lots of car infrastructure because it was very rich after WS2, and its…

It's a bit more complex than "Americans were rich". Whether they were rich or not:

* the US Federal Government gave returning servicemen a lot of money, including low-cost mortgages and loans, which resulted in huge housebuilding programs that created huge suburbs and exurbs (because it's much cheaper for the housebuilder): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill

* the US Gov spent billions on public works to create the highway system in the 1950s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal-Aid_Highway_Act_of_195...

* huge swathes of the USA enacted zoning laws so that the only type of house that could be built was single-family homes with huge gaps between them, creating the lowest possible density neighbourhoods, effectively requiring a car to get around (whereas higher density housing could have the same number of residents and be walkable) -- there's a strong likelyhood this was done to allow white flight to neighbourhoods that keep the socioeconomically deprived out, and until the 1960s it was completely legal to say "you can't rent or sell this house to black people" (it was only made illegal in 1968 with the Fair Housing Act):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-family_zoning

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_steering

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_(law)#Exclusionary_co...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_segregation_in_the_Uni...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residential_segregation_in_the...

These components very much add up to incentives to build widely and sparsely and to rely on cars to make it work. It didn't happen because Americans were rich, but because rich Americans wanted to exclude poor people from their lives

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#56

Post by BiteCode_dev »

pizzathyme wrote: post #49
shortformblog wrote: post #39

The irony being, of course, that it is surrounded by an area where it is basically impossible to get by without a car. My wife and I once left Gatlinburg after a week there and our tire blew out on the way out of town. It was a Sunday morning. Literally our only option to get it replaced that day was a Walmart location 15 miles away. So we had to wait for AAA for an hour and a half to tell us we were stuck using a do…

Exactly, more rails would not be useful because there is lower density in the US. Denmark is 141 persons/km^2, whereas the U.S. is about 36 persons/km^2 (census data). Even if you built train lines everywhere outside urban areas, any stop you step off at would still require a 20 minute drive to get to where you are going. (Or in your case 15!)

With that logic airportd should not have been built everywhere and useless, yet they were and are not.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#57

Post by shortformblog »

pizzathyme wrote: post #49
shortformblog wrote: post #39

The irony being, of course, that it is surrounded by an area where it is basically impossible to get by without a car. My wife and I once left Gatlinburg after a week there and our tire blew out on the way out of town. It was a Sunday morning. Literally our only option to get it replaced that day was a Walmart location 15 miles away. So we had to wait for AAA for an hour and a half to tell us we were stuck using a do…

Exactly, more rails would not be useful because there is lower density in the US. Denmark is 141 persons/km^2, whereas the U.S. is about 36 persons/km^2 (census data). Even if you built train lines everywhere outside urban areas, any stop you step off at would still require a 20 minute drive to get to where you are going. (Or in your case 15!)

There are plenty of places where it would make sense, actually, but Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg are very much not on that list. They are towns surrounded by mountains where once you get off the strip, you may not even run into a gas station or grocery store for a while.

Also, that was 15 miles, not 15 minutes. I think it took us more than an hour to get there with all the traffic. Excellent example of a tourist trap.

A related quirk of the area is its onetime attitude towards free alcohol samples, which I wrote about last year: https://tedium.co/2024/11/10/free-sample-history/

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#58

Post by creaturemachine »

johng wrote: post #16

I still believe that if Dolly ran for President, she would win. She's probably one of the most liked people in the country, percentage wise. I've actually asked quite a few random people what they think of her and I've never met someone that had anything bad to say.

We thought Hillary and Kamala were shoo-ins too. This rot runs deep throughout the electorate, something the media and parties know and are all too willing to exploit.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#59

Post by xeromal »

pizzathyme wrote: post #49
shortformblog wrote: post #39

The irony being, of course, that it is surrounded by an area where it is basically impossible to get by without a car. My wife and I once left Gatlinburg after a week there and our tire blew out on the way out of town. It was a Sunday morning. Literally our only option to get it replaced that day was a Walmart location 15 miles away. So we had to wait for AAA for an hour and a half to tell us we were stuck using a do…

Exactly, more rails would not be useful because there is lower density in the US. Denmark is 141 persons/km^2, whereas the U.S. is about 36 persons/km^2 (census data). Even if you built train lines everywhere outside urban areas, any stop you step off at would still require a 20 minute drive to get to where you are going. (Or in your case 15!)

I'm sure that density is even lower in most of the US south
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