WDW to provide 50 acres of free land for high speed train

[mikeland]

According to the Orlando Sentinel, WDW will give the state 50 acres for a high speed rail line to enter WDW property. I assume the 50 acres will include a station for the train, which will probably connect to the rest of the resort with buses.

Disney on board: Walt Disney World backs high-speed rail, offers up to 50 acres for station -- OrlandoSentinel.com

[SummerInFL]

About time!

[TTA-commuter]

This is great news!

[ORD84]

Hurrah! Hopefully they win the bid this will definitely alleviate some of the air traffic and bring much needed revenue and jobs to the area...

[Parisi]

Thats cool!!!

I have taken the Acela express train from NYC to Boston for work and it was a nice smooth ride.

I am sure Disney will "Disney"-fy it so that if it does go from MCO to Disney, the kids will be excited the entire time....

[robbiem]

Great idea - I guess its too much to ask for this to tie into a monorail expansion or light rail system for WDW but every little helps. Speaking as someone from teh UK where we've also been slow to back HSR I'm gald something like this is finally happening - I'm sure Walt would have approved as well. Maybe this could fulfill the orioinal EPCOT idea of educating people to new ideas and ways of doing things!

[flynnibus]

This is great news to hear Disney granting support outside a more greedy view of the project. However I wish the government would focus on more practical rail projects that would be commuter focused, not travel/vacation focused.

[Burnt Toast]

Well, that depends. The current phase 1 of the plan is supposed to go from MCO through the Orlando Convention Center, down to I-Drive, into Disney property, then down to Lakeland and Tampa. If anything, that's a huge stretch of area that is covered that will be easily used by non-tourists and locals just trying to commute to work and back.

[flynnibus]

Americans still hate buses. People (especially non-city people) will not drive to a rail station, then rail, then bus, then walk, to work. Just isn't going to happen. Commuting systems are always tiered and need density to be successful. Florida really don't have the density so the other layers will be much more heavily relied on. And all anyone has to do is look at any threads here to see how much people in America love buses.

Serving MCO and Disney doesn't target commuters. It targets tourists. The line needs to serve the residential areas as well as the commercial areas to be commuter oriented.

Additionally, there is no real active discouragement of driving vs commuting.. so people aren't going to bare the burden of taking rail+bus easily. Commuting via mass transit really relies on a strong discouragement of personal car use to have mass adoption. In many places its due to extremely high cost or traffic. Florida has neither. The traffic on I-4 is a joke compared to real traffic in other cities.

[lazyboy97O]

I am not sure this rail project will even attract tourists. With a baggage system in place, arriving tourists still need to take a train to the station and then a bus of some sort to their specific destination. Without a baggage system, they will also have to do each of those transfers with their luggage.

Then there is price. Unless Disney drops Magical Express, it is going to be cheaper to just take the bus right to Disney. Even then, the price needs to be competitive with the existing services.

Edit: A TGV ride from Charles de Gaulle to Marne-la-Vallée (about the same distance as MCO to WDW) costs at least $24.00 per person for an adult. At about $60 for a taxi, a family of four is going to have an easier time not taking the train.

[DisneyDude12]

I always thought there should be a "rapid transit" link from the airport to WDW, I just didn't really think it would actually happen! And did it actually say they were going to link it to Tampa? Wow! It would be cool if they could like make another TTC to go along with it. But it depends where the station's going to be built. I wonder where???

[MarkTwain]

Originally Posted by lazyboy97O

I am not sure this rail project will even attract tourists. With a baggage system in place, arriving tourists still need to take a train to the station and then a bus of some sort to their specific destination. Without a baggage system, they will also have to do each of those transfers with their luggage.

Then there is price. Unless Disney drops Magical Express, it is going to be cheaper to just take the bus right to Disney. Even then, the price needs to be competitive with the existing services.

Edit: A TGV ride from Charles de Gaulle to Marne-la-Vallée (about the same distance as MCO to WDW) costs at least $24.00 per person for an adult. At about $60 for a taxi, a family of four is going to have an easier time not taking the train.

I predict this will be popular, not among tourists arriving from the airport, but people going from park to park. For example, someone staying on Disney property, but wanting to spend a day at Universal. I'm sure Disney knows this, which is why I'm surprised they volunteered their land for this (I'm glad, just surprised). Isn't this a change of mind since a few years ago?

[JtnOrl]

A high speed train is meant to get people from city to city, not to specific commuter destinations within a single city. That's why the area needs a separate commuter train. I would argue that this one shouldn't even be stopping at Disney. It should be limited to downtowns and airports. Otherwise it won't be very "high speed." The article doesn't even mention a stop downtown, which is proof that they're doing this all wrong.