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Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

thetransitguy.substack.com

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Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#191

Post by NoGravitas »

cycomanic wrote: post #87
pizzathyme wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the suggestion here to build more subways/rails? The problem is that 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 person(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.

Tell that to Sweden with a density of 26 people/km^2 and a functioning rail system. Also why use Denmark of all places, their rail system isn't even that great compared to e.g. France or Germany.

And the population density of Tennessee is much higher than that of Sweden (67 people/km^2). The states with population densities most comparable to Sweden are Mississippi, Arizona, Vermont, Minnesota, and West Virginia.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#192

Post by bpt3 »

quitit wrote: post #167

I heard an interesting (and certain to be inflammatory) take the other day: "When we visit the USA, we look at it the same way you might look at Fiji or some other underdeveloped country." While I can explain part of that view as differences in cultural priorities (i.e. US residents valuing extensive highways over high speed rail). What I can certainly agree with is that internally in the USA, some states rate of pro…

What is interesting about a quote from someone who is obviously ignorant unless it came from a highly advanced life form from another planet?

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#193

Post by rsynnott »

bluGill wrote: post #186
rsynnott wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably more a question of _money_, really; you'd need to build, at a minimum, lots of passing loops, and really ideally additional lines. That all costs money.

Amtrak has been around since the 1970s. Competent management would be asking where the delays are coming from and putting a priority on them and fixing them (note that priority need not be right, only that you are close and do something). While we may still need more passing loops, we should have seen lot built and my now at least some of them would be the needed ones. Amtrak seems to stuck on large projects, so we h…

Amtrak don't actually own the tracks, right? They're not really in a position to fix this sort of problem; that would be on the owners of the tracks, who presumably don't have much incentive to fix it.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#194

Post by bpt3 »

jandrese wrote: post #48
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.

Many political pundits are still convinced that it's not possible to elect a woman as US president. Thus far the two that have tried have both managed to lose to Donald Trump.

Maybe try running candidates that aren't highly unpopular? Or ones who don't call a significant percentage of the population "deplorables"? Or ones who don't refuse to state consistent policy objectives or provide coherent explanations for major swings in her stance on key political positions? Or...

Trump is a reaction to large portions of the population being actively screwed over by decades of neoliberal policy that the Democrats are still trying to ram down their throats, and "anything other than more of that" is what is winning in most swing states. It's unfortunate the the Republican party is incapable of running someone who isn't a infantile, thin-skinned, nasty blowhard to govern responsibly while in power, but here we are, and we'll unfortunately stay here until either the Republican party grows a spine, the Democratic party figures out how to not intentionally alienate a good portion of the voting population while also preventing their base from destroying the party from within, or the whole thing blows up.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#195

Post by bluGill »

rsynnott wrote: post #193
bluGill wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amtrak has been around since the 1970s. Competent management would be asking where the delays are coming from and putting a priority on them and fixing them (note that priority need not be right, only that you are close and do something). While we may still need more passing loops, we should have seen lot built and my now at least some of them would be the needed ones. Amtrak seems to stuck on large projects, so we h…

Amtrak don't actually own the tracks, right? They're not really in a position to fix this sort of problem; that would be on the owners of the tracks, who presumably don't have much incentive to fix it.

Amtrak owns the tracks in the north east, and hasn't done anything.

Even where they don't own tracks, doing a deep dive into the areas where there are problems can find solutions. There are many options to force a private owner to fix problems, and congress can fund part of the cost for a passing track if Amtrak calls it a priority. Or Amtrak and sue the private railroad for not giving them legal priority if that is the real problem. I'm sure there are lots of other options that someone in the railroads would know.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#196

Post by xnyan »

hollywood_court wrote: post #66
shortformblog wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem was less that we had to replace it and more that it was a fairly significant distance away. (A distance made longer because we weren’t on the freeway but heavily trafficked roads in a tourist-heavy area.) We were near downtown Gatlinburg, and there were places that were closer, but they were all closed because it was a Sunday. We also would have had a better shot at not having our tire blow out if the clo…

15 miles is nothing on a spare tire. I'm not sure how many poor people you've spent time around, but I regularly see Nissan sedans driving around with multiple spare donuts on them. For some reason, it's always a Nissan.

>For some reason, it's always a Nissan.

If you have a pulse and a recent paystub, you can get financing from Nissan.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#197

Post by jhbadger »

rsynnott wrote: post #183
jmartin2683 wrote: post #182

The guy mentions that he’s never been to Tennessee and I believe him. Clearly he’s not aware of how low the population density is if he thinks trains make for sensible transport there.

Tennessee’s pop density seems to be a little lower than Ireland’s. Now, Ireland is not known for its good public transport, but just Dublin’s commuter lines have something like 100x the peak capacity of the Dollywood train. And Ireland’s anemic rail network is more a result of no investment from the 50s til the 90s than a density thing, really; there is clearly demand for far more capacity and they currently can’t bu…

The DART (Dublin's commuter rail to and from its suburbs) is great (as are the Luas trams around the city). The inter-city trains going to Limerick, Cork etc. (which many Irish I've met don't even know still run) remind me of Amtrak and not in a good way.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#198

Post by rsynnott »

jhbadger wrote: post #197
rsynnott wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tennessee’s pop density seems to be a little lower than Ireland’s. Now, Ireland is not known for its good public transport, but just Dublin’s commuter lines have something like 100x the peak capacity of the Dollywood train. And Ireland’s anemic rail network is more a result of no investment from the 50s til the 90s than a density thing, really; there is clearly demand for far more capacity and they currently can’t bu…

The DART (Dublin's commuter rail to and from its suburbs) is great (as are the Luas trams around the city). The inter-city trains going to Limerick, Cork etc. (which many Irish I've met don't even know still run) remind me of Amtrak and not in a good way.

Ah, the Cork one isn't _that_ bad.

The Limerick one is very, very bad, granted. The Galway one is actually now slightly slower than the bus! (Though still far more pleasant than the bus.)

AIUI nearly all rail travel volume is on the Dublin and Cork commuter lines these days; the intercity ones are kinda an afterthought (the only one to even manage hourly operation is Dublin to Cork at this point, I think).

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#199

Post by hinkley »

dylan604 wrote: post #143
const_cast wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we built the interstates in the 50s and 60s nobody really gave a flying fuck about that. We destroyed a lot of towns and eminent domain'd a lot of property. Naturally the regulatory and political landscape of now is quite different, and in a lot of ways for the better. But it is unfortunate that we've more or less forgotten how to do things.

In the 50s and 60s, the population was smaller. Towns/cities were smaller and not as developed as now. It would have be so much easier to build that infrastructure than it would be today. As it is now, to add rail cities are having to lose some streets to replace with rail or have some mixed use rail/car type of use. It makes no sense to compare today to the 50s/60s

We also just plowed through black and Hispanic neighborhoods and we are less cavalier about such things now.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#200

Post by jandrese »

bpt3 wrote: post #187
const_cast wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely can compete with cost, we just have to not cheat. Often when we compare transit to automobiles we don't take into account the cost of roads (???). Interstates have cost us over 25 trillion by now. That's just the interstates.

First of all, I don't know who is comparing the two and ignoring cost, so you can put away that strawman. Secondly, road costs are mostly paid for by fuel (i.e. use) taxes, and I think the fuel tax should be increased to pay for all of it personally. What percentage of public transit costs are covered by use taxes? In my area (which is a major city that is not NYC), it's around 10%, and it still makes little financia…

Use taxes cover about 36%[1] of road construction and maintenance, the rest comes out of the general budget. If they were raised to cover all of the costs driving would be unaffordable to many people. Or at the very least Americans would suddenly be interested in small cars again. Some other countries do push more of the burden of road maintenance onto drivers and those countries tend to have far more robust public transit systems.

[1] https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...

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