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Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

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Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#211

Post by WorldMaker »

xp84 wrote: post #209
WorldMaker wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dolly's amusement parks company Herschend took over operations of Kentucky Kingdom and it has been very interesting watching the care being put into that park, especially with comparison to when it was managed by Six Flags. Kentucky Kingdom is not yet "Dollywood North" by any stretch of imagination, but you can see enough of the care and emphasis on friendliness that you can kind of see the expected trajectory at thi…

That's great to hear. With Six Flags being such a polar opposite to the kind of care Dollywood represents, especially. I'm still sad that Cedar Fair sold out to Six Flags, because they had at least a modestly better reputation. Six Flags in my opinion has long been run in a fashion that makes private equity proud: Reduce cap-ex to the minimum level, minimize cleaning, maintenance, staffing, etc. while extracting ever…

Yeah, Six Flags basically bankrupted Kentucky Kingdom before they left, sold off a lot of rides and left many in states of disrepair that were hard to come back from. (It didn't help that the bidding process to buy the park out of that bankruptcy involved the Hoosier owners of a rival regional park that eventually gave the impression they may have intentionally been sandbagging the process to stretch out the time the park was left non-operational and without active maintenance.)

It's hard not to worry about the Cedar Fair parks under that sort of management having seen it at its worst first hand once already. Kings Island has a big place in my heart and I saw the Six Flags takeover with some grimacing from the viewpoint of a tiny, tiny shareholder in Cedar Fair.

But also yeah, trying to come back from the CapEx problems Kentucky Kingdom was saddled with by Six Flags is a part of where I have a lot of respect for what Herschend has been doing at the park. It's slow, but steady improvement so far, with a CapEx plan that doesn't seem that aggressive, but also takes into account how much was needed and most importantly seems to be planning for the long term again (versus Six Flags' short-term mentality).

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#212

Post by chrisco255 »

NoGravitas wrote: post #190
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.

It may surprise you, but the population density of Tennessee is 67/km^2, which sure, is a lot lower than Denmark, but also a lot higher than 36. Most of the east coast has a higher population density than Denmark. Florida has a higher population density than Denmark. When people talk about the low population density of the US, they're averaging in a lot of sparsely populated land west of the Mississippi, which has fu…

Florida has a high speed rail that runs between Miami and Orlando and has plans to expand. It's called Brightline, and it's one of the few successful passenger rail projects in recent years in the U.S.

Also population per km^2 can be incredibly misleading, because it's an average. One example could have the population far more evenly spread across the land area, and another could have a dense urban core surrounded by farmland or national parks.

Florida has a slightly higher population than Denmark, but as an example, one of it's largest cities, Orlando, has a population density of ~283 people / km2, while Copenhagen has a population density of 6800 people / km2.

I have lived in Florida all my life. It is sadly the definition of sprawl. There is no way to build enough rail that would serve the average Floridian for day to day transport.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#213

Post by chrisco255 »

NoGravitas wrote: post #191
cycomanic wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can't look at average population density of the whole country. Look at the population density of the biggest cities:

Sweden - Stockholm (5260/km2), Gothenburg (2936/km2), Malmo (4641/km2) Tennesee - Nashville (557/km2), Memphis (777/km2), Knoxville (782/km2)

Averages lie.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#214

Post by chrisco255 »

dylan604 wrote: post #54
hinkley wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Eminent domain for public transport is a nonissue. State and Federal government does it all the time for new roads or road widening. Plus Texas has extremely wide state-owned corridors that have plenty of width to implement a rail line. There is a private company trying to make this happen in Texas, which it may be able to pull off.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#215

Post by chrisco255 »

hinkley wrote: post #199
dylan604 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We plowed through anything in the way, as is necessary to build roads, including vast amounts of white neighborhoods and farmland. But nonetheless, the idea of a black or hispanic or white neighborhood is increasingly antiquated.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#216

Post by chrisco255 »

hinkley wrote: post #78
dylan604 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even in the Midwest you see little doglegs in county and state highways where it’s obvious one farmer would not part with a 40 ft slice of land at the edge of his property so the road has to swing into his neighbors and then back.

That's not how eminent domain works. The government can always take land for public use provided just compensation. Now, was the farmer some influential person who could convince the city or state to route around? Probably. It's never the case that the government couldn't do it if they wanted to though.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#217

Post by cycomanic »

bpt3 wrote: post #189
cycomanic wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is built in major metro areas, and requires endless subsidies to stay afloat in all but one of those areas. So how do you thing roads are build? Is that not a subsidy? Especially out in rural areas where people always complain the loudest that public transport doesn't work because it requires subsidies. If you would make people pay for their road use, rural living would very quickly become unsustainable for most…

> So how do you thing roads are build? Is that not a subsidy? No? In my area, new local roads are normally built by developers and maintained by HOAs, with fuel taxes covering most state and federal road work (I think it should all be covered by fuel taxes personally). > Especially out in rural areas where people always complain the loudest that public transport doesn't work because it requires subsidies. Public tran…

> > So how do you thing roads are build? Is that not a subsidy? > > No? In my area, new local roads are normally built by developers and maintained by HOAs, with fuel taxes covering most state and federal road work (I think it should all be covered by fuel taxes personally). > > > Especially out in rural areas where people always complain the loudest that public transport doesn't work because it requires subsidies. >

My point is, even if roads are build and maintained by fuel taxes only (as you point out they usually are not, and in most countries much of the road network was build using other income sources), those fuel taxes are a not local (happy to be corrected though), i.e. rural roads get massive subsidies from metropolitan areas.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#218

Post by cycomanic »

chrisco255 wrote: post #213
NoGravitas wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can't look at average population density of the whole country. Look at the population density of the biggest cities: Sweden - Stockholm (5260/km2), Gothenburg (2936/km2), Malmo (4641/km2) Tennesee - Nashville (557/km2), Memphis (777/km2), Knoxville (782/km2) Averages lie.

But the trains connect cities? How is their density relevant? Moreover the density of the Gothenburg metropolitan area (which includes Mölndal, Hisingen) is 256 people/km^2 and the public transport network spans the whole area.
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