I grew up in a town called Seymour, which is in the same county as Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge. It's Dolly country. She's a hero - she's done so much for her community. Much of the money you spend at Dollywood goes to help so many public causes. One of them is the Imagination Library, which gives out free books every month from birth to 5 years of age. I was one of the first families that got to take a part in it. I certainly don't remember much from when I was 5, but I do remember getting those books. I imagine it had a positive impact on my growth.
We'd go to Dollywood a few times a year - she would give out free tickets to people who worked in Gatlinburg to go. It's really well run, and their water park is great too. Growing up, we'd ride the train when we visited. While I didn't appreciate it much as a kid, when I grew up I realized how awesome of an opportunity that was.. I moved away from Tennessee about 12 years ago, one of the biggest things I have missed is Dollywood and their big steam train.
hirvi74 · 20h ago
Fellow native Tennessean here, as well.
Words cannot describe the love and admiration myself and the vast majority of Tennesseans have for Dolly Parton. She is the closest thing to a living Saint that many of us will ever witness.
BlackjackCF · 19h ago
Americans are divided on a lot of things, but Dolly is universally beloved.
mig39 · 19h ago
You'll be happy to know that Imagination Library sent monthly books to my 3 Canadian kids as well! We loved every single one of them!
HenryBemis · 20h ago
I discovered her music 'recently'. The 'imagination library' is a thing she has been doing for years, and I read about this on CNN or BBC or something like that, and I was deeply moved. When I read more about it (if I remember well) she started this initiative because her father couldn't read, and she wanted to make sure every kid has books to read. When I read that last part I thought to myself "shit.. this is a KIND person" (like wow!! she is a great human being!).
devilbunny · 15h ago
She bought the property that is now Dollywood specifically to provide both amusement and jobs to people in East Tennessee.
Imagination Library is mostly an umbrella organization that provides logistical support to the many, many locally-funded groups that actually send the books.
She's very kind, and apparently very charming and down-to-earth despite having a deity-quality voice, but she's also really smart and knows how to leverage her celebrity to help people.
If you've never listened to it, watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMrfM711vXI - it's "Jolene", one of her most famous songs, but slowed down like it was a 45 RPM single played at 33 1/3 RPM like an LP. Not a single note is off, even that slowly.
deelowe · 1d ago
Took the family to Dollywood this year and it was by far the best run theme park I've been to. I was amazed at the cleanliness, friendliness of the staff, and how well maintained everything was. The train was really cool too. One of only two times I've been able to see a real coal fired steam engine functioning.
strictnein · 23h ago
It's a great park with some surprisingly enjoyable rides. Lightning Rod is one of the most intense coasters I've been on. Definitely a little rough at times, but man it does not hold back at all. And it's kind of hidden in the layout of the park, with a lot of the track over the top of a hill.
A visit to the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area and the Smoky Mountains is great trip, especially with kids. Lots of quirky nonsense to enjoy, as well as some beautiful nature.
madcaptenor · 22h ago
I live in Atlanta and have not been up there. I have kids. I should probably fix that.
(That is, I should "fix that" by going up to the Smokies with them, not by getting rid of the kids!)
sarchertech · 22h ago
100% you should do that.
I grew up in metro Atlanta and some of my favorite childhood memories are of family trips to the Smokies.
Mingus mill is one of my favorite places in the world.
I live in Chattanooga now and we take the kids every 6 months or so.
marcusb · 19h ago
It's worth it - just check to see if any big events are going on in Gatlinburg before you book. We went there one time (without checking) during a hot rod/motorcycle convention. The traffic was insane.
ThunderSizzle · 20h ago
Definitely should fix living near Atlanta, lol.
jdironman · 23h ago
Also some fair dining. Local Goat, The Trout House, the apple orchards for sweets. it makes for a nice weekend / week getaway. clingmans dome (Now called Kuwohi Observation Tower) is a not so strenuous hike with 360 degree views. Highly recommend the drive up to it in the fall when the trees are golden and the sun is shining.
stusmall · 22h ago
I never really liked theme parks. They are always noisy, crowded and tacky. When I was in high school we made a family trip to Dollywood on the way to somewhere else. The fact that I remember Dollywood but don't remember our intended destination says a lot.
We all had a blast and didn't expect to love it so much. Just a fantastic place and they are doing a great job.
WorldMaker · 22h ago
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 this point. I've found it encouraging to watch.
simple10 · 51m ago
I've been to Dollywood a few times while visiting relatives in Tennessee. It's a trip. The rides and shows are fine. The real attraction is the people watching. By far the best and weirdest slice of Americana in a theme park. Highly recommended.
flippyhead · 1d ago
> Dollywood Express, the heritage steam train that operates within Dollywood, has a higher rail ridership than 27 states.
I don't now if it's useful, but this way of putting quanties in context, would be neat to see about all kinds of things. Like how they seem to always do rare things compared to your chance of getting hit by lightning.
benterix · 23h ago
I believe the point of the whole article is that the public transportation is broken if a train in a theme park has more users than regular trains in many states.
pythonaut_16 · 21h ago
I'm pro public transit and trains, but the stat has more shock value than actual logic.
What's feasible for a theme park doesn't necessarily extrapolate to public transit.
jandrese · 23h ago
More riders than the commuter trains in over half of the states.
shortformblog · 23h ago
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 donut to get there.
There is a trolley system but it is anemic.
ethbr1 · 21h ago
Minor observation: you were in east TN, so chances are if you'd stood by your car with your thumb out, the next car would have stopped and happily offered you a ride to Walmart. (Said as someone who's hauled more than a few random people where they needed to get to in east TN)
Part of Tennessee's charm is how far you can get with a smile and "Gosh, I hate to bother you, but could you..."
susiecambria · 17h ago
Oh, AAA.
My husband and I were driving a camouflaged CUCV (military bronco) from VA to WV around Thanksgiving. Towing a trailer full of stuff and had four large dogs.
The truck died. In Virginia, one mile from the WV line. Someone picked me up and dropped me off at the first gas station so I could call AAA. I had to talk with several CSRs; the last one told me the closest tow truck was in Charlottesville, hours away from where we were on I64. I was beet red, smoking like a chimney, and making up curse words.
Once we kinda agreed that there was likely a closer alternative, the young woman asked how the tow truck driver would identify the truck since it was camo. I told the men, they chuckled, and I told her it was CAMO, it was not covered by a cloaking device. I hung up.
The young man at the gas station/coffee shop called a local tow truck and we were dropped at Gate 3 of fair grounds in Fairlee, WV.
Ended up that the camo/cloaking device paled in comparison to the later challenge: It was the first day of hunting season and most garages were closed during the week of Thanksgiving.
I hate AAA.
hollywood_court · 22h ago
Isn't that standard though? If I get a flat, I hop out and replace it with a spare. Then I drive to a shop to have that flat tire either patched or replaced entirely.
I know some new models don't include spares, but they often have run flats and temp sealant kits included.
What are the other options?
shortformblog · 22h ago
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 closest gas station wasn’t 10 miles away.
hollywood_court · 22h ago
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.
xnyan · 2h ago
>For some reason, it's always a Nissan.
If you have a pulse and a recent paystub, you can get financing from Nissan.
ethbr1 · 21h ago
Nissan's been making minimum cost models for awhile*, that are just reliable enough to stay rolling.
Ergo, if you want the cheapest car you can get, it'll probably be a Nissan.
* Before the late-10s Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi insanity
hollywood_court · 21h ago
Oh I know. Carlos Ghosn got them to focus more on the fleet market. I'll always be a Toyota/Lexus man, but I owned a Datsun wagon for a while and I followed the industry closely when I ran an import repair shop (which was never open on a Saturday or Sunday).
It's wild how that one man managed to change the entire path of a once great brand.
ethbr1 · 21h ago
I think of it as one too many levels of management. At some point, your nearest understanding of the business is powerpoints about powerpoints about powerpoints... and then dumb ideas start to seem reasonable.
esaym · 20h ago
Goodness. I've seen people drive for years on a spare. I don't know why you would sweat going 15 miles on one...
sandworm101 · 22h ago
Ya, changing a flat tire was once part of learning to drive. Also, manual transmissions, jumpstarting, swapping a fuse, and basic low-speed maneuvers like rocking out of snowbanks or crossing large potholes. All that is now gone. Most care owners dont know what a tow eye is, let alone where to find one. It is so bad that there are now university-level "adulting" courses for millenials. First up: changing a tire.
We know how to change a damn tire. We just couldn’t easily buy one because Gatlinburg didn’t have any garages open on Sunday morning.
quesera · 21h ago
> 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 donut to get there.
I would describe that as "inconvenient" but actually very fortunate!
Walmart was only 15 miles away? You have a donut/spare, or AAA has provided you with one? That's lucky! Nowhere near "problem" territory at all.
Just an interruption to your schedule, but that happens on road trips.
esseph · 21h ago
A very large portion of the country doesn't have garages open on Sunday.
bluGill · 21h ago
Most mechanics charge double time for working Sunday, even if they had not work at all the previous week (which doesn't happen, but if it did). Retail is open weekend, but mechanics like just about everyone else wants to work their 9-5 monday-friday job so they get weekends off.
hollywood_court · 21h ago
In the US, I've only lived in Chicago, Portland (OR), San Francisco, Dallas, NYC, and Auburn, but I don't think I have ever seen an automobile garage open on a Sunday unless it was a WalMart, Sam's, or Costco.
hollywood_court · 22h ago
Where do you live that has garages open on a Sunday morning? I don't think I've ever seen a tire shop or auto repair place (other than the big box and wholesale warehouse places) that's open on a Sunday.
xp84 · 21h ago
I decided to take a very non-representative sample, and found that in many (but not all) parts of northern California, locations of the chain tire shop that I use are closed on Sundays, but most locations in the LA area are open 7 days a week. This chain has a lot of locations. It could be that they're responding to what their competitors do in both cases. So maybe getting tires on Sunday is a so-cal thing? TBH, I personally am more used to expecting the tire shop to be open 7 days a week, unless it was a small, locally-owned place.
esseph · 19h ago
LA is an anomaly. Most places are 5-6 days a week, tops. Around where I'm at currently, if the place is open on Saturdays, they're closed on Monday to compensate. There's a lot of those
sandworm101 · 22h ago
But it does sound like you didn't know how to repair a flat. Any hardware store and most gas stations will have either a plug kit, or some of that horrible blow-in sealant in a can. Either will get you back on the within an hour.
(Fyi, if anyone reading this does ever use that sealant stuff, when you get to a proper repair shop TELL THEM about the sealant before I pop the bead and spray it all over the shop.)
Turns an "omg" problem into "eh, hold my beer..." for 99% of tire punctures.
sandworm101 · 21h ago
I would add a jumpstart kit and/or cables, preferably with the knowledge of how to use them safely. (Even teslas occasionally need to be jumped.) On long drives I also bring a small fire extinguisher (I take the one from my kitchen). Never had to use it but you don't need it until you do.
ethbr1 · 20h ago
As my father quipped, 'It's amazing how much luckier well-prepared people are.'
shortformblog · 20h ago
Our tire was shredded so that would not have worked.
pizzathyme · 23h ago
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!)
Retric · 15h ago
It’s really not that simple.
If Denmark population 6 million people and 141 people per/km^2 has zero issue with trains then Florida a flat state population 22 million population density 163/km^2 should be full of them.
And it’s not alone. MD has 6 million people and 246/km^2, Massachusetts 7 million 347/km^2, New Jersey 9.3 million and 488 people / km^2.
Further, if you consider the road network the overwhelming majority of roads are in high populations density areas. NYC alone has ~1/6 as many road miles as the entire interstate highway system which criss cross the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System It’s a classic edge to surface area problem, 10,000 acre farms need 1/100 the roads per acre as 1 acre suburban homes. The same kind of scaling applies to rail networks.
Spooky23 · 21h ago
You could make the same argument about highways if you didn’t have the massive federal funding. Maintenance of an interstate averages around $15,000 per lane/mile. Bridges are 7-12x.
We had a viable rail network all over the country as recently as the early 1950s. Federal policy blew it up because dispersing the population was seen as a civil defense priority for an atomic war, and cars and airplanes provided an economic engine to keep workers and returning soldiers employed.
Later, the shift to rural industry and trucking was a way to break unions. Meatpacking transformed from a good union gig back to an oppressive industry fueled by undocumented labor. If the workers acted up, the owners would realize they knew where a bunch of undocumented people lived and call in INS/ICE.
GJim · 9h ago
> dispersing the population was seen as a civil defense priority for an atomic war
Do you have a citation for this?
(I'm not necessarily doubting, it's just a claim I have not heard before).
Also google the “Clay report”, there’s a bunch of books and sources from there.
At this point, (1955) bombers and fission bombs were the threat. That’s why we had AT&T invest in hardened long lines facilities, shelters and duck and cover.
The reality of hydrogen bombs and ICBMs kind of took the wind out of sails of civil defense. You’re not going to drive out of Manhattan with 20 minutes notice and get to a place where you’ll survive. This really affected the people associated with this — the think tank guys at RAND and other places assumed they’d all be dead by the mid 1970s, and I can’t help to think that it didn’t affect their points of view.
shortformblog · 22h ago
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.
It’s not just surrounded by mountains, it’s just outside the border of Great Smokey Mountains National Park. It’s essentially a dead end for rail because to continue on you need to either go up a mile in elevation in a very short span or tunnel mountains inside a national park.
One of the worst places for rail east of the Mississippi.
xorcist · 22h ago
Is there a reason Denmark was chosen for comparison, rather than neighboring Norway (15 persons/km^2) or Sweden (25 persons/km^2)?
stevage · 17h ago
The article mentions Denmark's economy is about the same size as Tennessee's.
Parent should have compared Denmark's population density with TN's (65/km^2).
whoisyc · 16h ago
It is funny the author chose Denmark as an example because Greenland is technically a territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, and with Greenland included the Kingdom of Denmark has a population density of 2.68 per km^2.
Does this mean it is not worthwhile to build public transit in the European part of Denmark? If not, then why does the population density of the entire US matter in a discussion about Tennessee, a state 80% denser than the American average?
By the way, Finland has both a smaller economy and a way lower population density (18.4 per km^2) than Denmark and the US. Would railways be not useful in Finland because of that?
bluGill · 21h ago
The US is a very large country. If you limited your population density numbers east of the Mississippi and the fast west coast from California to Washington you will discover population densities very similar to parts of Europe that have great transit.
xeromal · 22h ago
I'm sure that density is even lower in most of the US south
sarchertech · 22h ago
Most of the land area of almost every state is below that number, but there are 23 states below that number overall and only 3 are Southern.
Nearly all of the low population density states are out West.
freedomben · 22h ago
Yeah, and in the mountain west probably much lower still. I think to be useful, the numbers need to be regional
BiteCode_dev · 22h ago
With that logic airportd
should not have been built everywhere and useless, yet they were and are not.
esseph · 13h ago
"There are approximately 14,400 private-use and 5,000 public-use airports, heliports, and seaplane bases in the US."
Works out to about 288 private airports per state on average, and 100 public per state (on average).
stevage · 17h ago
By that logic, airports should only have been built in cities...which is exactly where they are.
esseph · 19h ago
Most airports are privately owned.
tomcam · 18h ago
It's a blessing that you were able to find help so easily.
sarchertech · 23h ago
If you’re going to count the Dollywood Express, you’d better count the Tennessee Valley Railroad too haha.
In addition to the longer scenic trips, there is regular 6 mile round trip “Missionary Ridge Local” route that could theoretically be used for commuting.
I think my favorite part is when the announcer explains the emergency stop system, and clarifies that getting a cinder in your face doesn't count as an emergency (IIRC they have safety goggles you can wear if you're concerned about it).
EDIT: found a video I took of it going by where you can hear the whistle blow (I was there over the holidays which is why it's decked out for Christmas): https://www.instagram.com/p/B64mteDJUBl/
anonymars · 20h ago
I love steam trains in the abstract, but was appalled at how filthy it was. My skin and clothes were covered in soot and I pulled my shirt up to my mouth to try and avoid breathing it in and coughing.
Blount county native here. (How native? Almost got married in the church her nephew preaches at).
There was a joke that made its rounds here round about the time Queen Elizabeth died:
> Bob: "The queen's dead"
> Alice: "Dolly?!"
If you ride the train, be prepared for soot to get in your eyes.
I'm sure Dolly would be tickled silly to know a bunch of computer people were talking about her.
hirvi74 · 20h ago
I have met the man that was allegedly in charge of a lot of the operational management or something of the like for those trains at one time! He has a fully operational train track with various functioning trains in his front yard. He has quite the collection too.
He has a little festival every year on his property:
I listened to a great podcast which helped explain her appeal. She is a fascinating combination of genuine friendliness, talent and achievement, and incredible toughness and resilience.
How funny, my wife and I were literally just talking about Dollywood right before I opened Hacker News.
We live in Sevier County, and Dolly offers $5 tickets to her park to locals this week, which is really quite a charitable thing to do. The discount even applies for taking ~$100 off of a season pass.
Never realized that train got so much usage, but I guess it makes sense. Although you do have to pay attention if you sit near the front as you’ll be slightly covered in soot after the ride.
lisper · 1d ago
The comparison of the Dollywood Express ridership to statewide railways is pretty unfair. The Dollywood Express is not really transportation, it's an amusement park ride, more comparable to the Disney Railway than Amtrack, and I'm pretty sure more people ride the Disney Railway than the Dollywood Express. The economics of amusement park rides and actual transportation systems are radically different. (Actually, the Disney Monorail(s) would be a more apt comparison because it actually serves as transportation!)
larusso · 23h ago
I think it doesn’t matter. The point is that more people drive daily with these trains than most people in other states their respected train lines. It’s just shows that the US has nearly no train infrastructure when a theme park train has more ridership than most states.
Granted this is by design because the US over prioritized the highway system over a train transit system. There is a new video from Daniel Steiner who usually explains the origin of cities via maps did a take on the US highway system
The author both points that out, and links to his essay "How Disney Became One of the Largest Transit Agencies in North America' (What Does a Theme Park Operating the 10th Largest Transit Agency in the U.S. Say About Us?)" at https://thetransitguy.substack.com/p/how-disney-became-one-o...
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bombcar · 20h ago
Six million people ride “It’s a Small World” at Disneyland each year. That’s more than many transit systems. But it’s a useless comparison, really.
jancsika · 23h ago
In real life freight trains have the right of way in the U.S.
In other words, the Dollywood Express would be a lot less fun if it spent half the day waiting while trolls unload corndogs from two-person handcars randomly distributed along the track.
conscion · 20h ago
The US should really nationalize their rail infrastructure; only the rails themselves, not the railroad companies. The railroads should be treated as transportation infrastructure the same way that the highway system is.
With nationalized rails, the US could set standards for rail-sharing which could help passenger rail and invest in improved rail connections between cities which would improve both freight and passenger rail service.
Currently, each railroad company gets to maintain their own little fiefdoms in certain parts of the US
Sadly true even though legally it's supposed to be the opposite. [0] It's just not enforced at all and as a result of that (and freight trains becoming massive monsters that can't even fit on the passing sidings designed for them) Amtrak service sucks.
Amtrak RoW is part of the deal for the land they received (and the help they get breaking potential labor strikes). They got to drop their intercity service to Amtrak for considerations like the Amtrak right of way too they didn't get nothing out of the deal.
sarchertech · 22h ago
Yep. My wife and I took the train from Atlanta to New Orleans once, we spent 50% of our total time waiting in multiple places for freight trains to pass.
We got in 4 hours late if I recall and nearly all of that was waiting for freight trains.
bluGill · 21h ago
The freights respond if Amtrack would keep their schedules things would work, but once a train is late they have to do extra work to find places for that train that isn't running schedule. (and one badly maintained local railroad early in the trip is enough to ensure Amtrak is always late)
I'm not sure who is right in the above, but it is important to at least consider all sides of the argument.
sarchertech · 20h ago
Oh yeah I’m sure there’s plenty of blame to go around. But for passenger service, you really can’t have a system where being 5 minutes late compounds into an hour late because then it’s a positive feedback loop and there’s no way to recover.
bluGill · 19h ago
that nobody has fixed the problem despite laws and years of talk shows how incompetent management is...
rsynnott · 5h ago
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.
bluGill · 4h ago
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 have shelf's full of plans/studies on new lines, but they are all too big to build and still they keep making more.
rsynnott · 3h ago
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.
bluGill · 3h ago
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.
bell-cot · 23h ago
Back in the day, America's RR's ran their own passenger services (no Amtrak), on their own track, and generally gave right-of-way to the passengers.
They got out of that business because it was losing ridership and money.
WorldMaker · 21h ago
When they started getting rid of passenger service had a lot less to do with losing ridership and money and lot more that cargo contracts paid a lot more and with a lot more regularity. The "Robber Barons" get that nickname for a lot of reasons, but one of them was using public land and eminent domain tactics under the "public utility" excuse of providing passenger service for a time for an area, while negotiating for the shortest possible passenger service requirements and the least possible public oversight of their use of once public land, because they knew all along the real, big money was in cargo. A lot of passenger services ended to the day of passenger service requirements contracts ending, even if they were profitable and had high ridership.
The scam was in from the beginning. The car helped exacerbate the problem and the train companies made big fusses about all the lost ridership to the car, as things went along, but even at the beginning a lot of the US rail companies were built on the knowledge that cargo was lucrative and passenger travel the necessary trojan horse to pickup land for cheap.
bell-cot · 21h ago
I kinda doubt that the RR's - especially the long-established ones of the north-east - would have spent the vast sums on opulent passenger terminals, fast luxury trains, and high-density passenger service if passenger service was merely a legal necessity for their freight businesses.
Flip-side, I have heard that the phase-out RMS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Mail_Service ) cut the RR's passenger train revenue by about 1/3. Few business models can survive a 1/3 revenue cut.
BTW - at the high end, airplanes were at least as damaging (to passenger rail) as cars.
WorldMaker · 20h ago
> I kinda doubt that the RR's - especially the long-established ones of the north-east
I was talking most specifically about the early "oil rush" ones in a lot of "rollover country" (or yes, "flyover country" being the modern term because indeed, air travel also disrupted train travel a lot) that didn't live long enough to be long-established, in the North-East, or bother much at all with opulent terminals and luxury cars. Many of those companies really did exist just long enough for eminent domain to do its job and launder public lands into private hands that cared a lot more about cargo contracts than any of the places the trains stopped along the way.
Most of those rail company names are also kind of lost to time, too, and the tracks are owned by cargo-oriented mega-conglomerates like CSX today. Not to pick on any one in particular by naming names, but also the easiest one to anecdotally name because it owns the dilapidated station I regularly walk past that is today an awful, unsafe shelter for the unhoused that sometimes cargo trains sit on top of for hours at a time, and wasn't particularly "opulent" (outdoor and entirely exposed to the elements) even during the exactly 10 years it operated as a passenger station. (It closed to passenger travel before both most highways had been built and air travel became common, weird huh? Surely just a coincidence that 10 years was the required passenger contract by the eminent domain seizures that opened the land for rail development?)
quitit · 15h ago
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 progress far exceeds that of others to the extent that without significant leadership at the federal level there will certainly be "two Americas".
bpt3 · 3h ago
What is interesting about a quote from someone who is obviously ignorant unless it came from a highly advanced life form from another planet?
toomuchtodo · 1d ago
It's a great time, highly recommend if you're in the area.
crooked-v · 1d ago
For people who aren't theme park nerds: Dollywood consistently gets ranked as one of the best theme parks in the US. It's absolutely worth planning a vacation around if you generally like that sort of stuff but shudder at the current pricing of Disney/Universal.
The city it's in is also right next door to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, so it's very easy to make a day trip for various trails or tours.
moron4hire · 1d ago
I concur. We did a family trip a few years ago with my parents and my sister and her family. 5 adults (2 in their 60s) and 3 children aged 5 to 8. Pigeon Forge and Dollywood were a great experience for everyone.
My mother has some mobility issues and the park was pretty well laid out for her to get around with an electric scooter. The park has lots of rides for different ages of children. And the surrounding Pigeon Forge area has lots of other attractions to make a jam-packed week of activities.
danans · 22h ago
> 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
Reducing public transit to an unserious/unreal thing is the point.
People who live in car-bound places (most of America) visit theme parks like Disney's where a big part of the novelty is the make-believe urban walkability and transit (i.e. Disney's "Main Street"), creating the belief that such things are fantasy (tied to the rest of Disney's make-believe world) rather that something quite normal that people in much of the urban world experience (minus the dancing anthropomorphic mice).
Essentially, what is pretty normal elsewhere is repackaged as fantasy in the US.
Are Dollywood/Disney part of some great conspiracy to undermine walkability and transit in the US? No, but they sure as heck know that people feelbetter in that kind of human-scale environment, and they are fundamentally in the business of making people feel better via escapism.
Exoristos · 21h ago
Main Street's "make-believe urban walkability and transit" represent all American towns of the pre–Henry Ford era. American families with roots here are well aware of this. Or people who browse classic American literature or film. In fact, I'm straining to think who besides yourself might think ubiquitous American rail and walkways were imaginary.
danans · 17h ago
> I'm straining to think who besides yourself might think ubiquitous American rail and walkways were imaginary
We agree with each other. I know they were real in the pre-car era (and I have lived in some of the few remaining walkable US towns and cities), but note that my comment was speaking the present tense, not the past tense like yours.
Walkability is not the average American's lived reality today. In fact, living in a walkable area tends to be a marker of heightened privilege nowadays, sadly.
ethbr1 · 21h ago
Related: Chaumont-Sur-Loire [0] and Chenonceau [1] are both absolutely gorgeous in person, especially when everything is in bloom, and less than 3 hours drive from Paris. (Or train, since it's a civilized country)
Would highly recommend a château trip down the Loire valley over Disney. ;)
And if you really need a faux fix, there's always Mini Castle Park [2] near Amboise...
PS: Yes, I know Neuschwanstein, but haven't made it to Bavaria yet. On the list!
jmartin2683 · 6h ago
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.
rsynnott · 5h ago
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 build it fast enough.
jhbadger · 2h ago
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.
rsynnott · 2h ago
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).
NoGravitas · 4h ago
I'm from Tennessee, and it could easily support light rail systems in the metro areas of each of Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville, and a regular rail route between those cities. Maybe not a lot more than that, but just having that would make life a lot easier.
johng · 1d ago
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.
bigthymer · 23h ago
> 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.
creaturemachine · 22h ago
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.
bigstrat2003 · 15h ago
> We thought Hillary and Kamala were shoo-ins too.
I'm sure some people did think that. But in my experience, many more people thought they were horrible candidates that showed the Democrat party cared more about rewarding insiders than actually winning the election.
lukas099 · 19h ago
I never thought either of them was a shoo-in, especially Harris. Was that really a consensus?
deltarholamda · 18h ago
It was if you only listened to corporate media outlets.
jandrese · 23h ago
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.
triceratops · 20h ago
For all we know having a running mate named "Tim" is the actual campaign kryptonite.
bpt3 · 3h ago
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.
jandrese · 28m ago
I do find it amusing that people still say that women are "too emotional" to hold the job while Trump is throwing temper tantrums and making knee jerk proclamations almost daily on Truth Social.
BizarroLand · 23h ago
I think if we elected people for their general track record of good deeds, then Dolly would win and be a good candidate, but I also think what we need is someone to come in and be a total jerk to the total jerks that are ruining the world for everyone else right now, someone who would ruthlessly focus on making the world as decent as it can be for as many people as possible even if it inconveniences a handful of people.
Reason077 · 17h ago
> "U.S. States With Less Rail Transit Ridership Than Dollywood"
I'm sure Nevada wouldn't be on this list if the Las Vegas Monorail were included. Average daily ridership was 11,780 in 2022, and it can reach around 40,000 daily riders on peak conference days.
stevage · 18h ago
>Dollywood moves about 5,000 people per day. That’s 92% of all rail riders in Tennessee, if you exclude Amtrak’s single daily train, the City of New Orleans.
So...why do they exclude the "City of New Orleans"? They don't explain.
sb057 · 17h ago
City of New Orleans is functionally a through line with the only major stop in the state being Memphis. The only other bookable stop period in the state is in the middle of nowhere with the only trips departing at 11pm and 4am. I suspect the average ridership between the two stations is approximately zero.
jacobjjacob · 11h ago
Was just there a couple weeks ago and didn’t get to ride, they were doing engine repairs :(
Valien · 23h ago
Riding the train at Dollywood is one of life's best experiences. Highly recommend it for sure!
Also, if you're ever in Pennsylvania and go to the train museum in Strasburg you can ride that steam train as well and it is also a blast.
xnx · 1d ago
> The trains run all day during park hours and can burn through up to four tons of coal per day and 4000 gallons of water.
Oof. That's a lot of coal. ~ 1000 tons of coal/year or the CO2 equivalent of 10 million miles of driving.
Edit: corrected math
disentanglement · 1d ago
I'd love to see the system of mathematics where 4 times 365 comes out to one million. Maybe I can get my bank to use the same system.
it's true, but we still move plenty of the economy on trains, just not people. flights are cheaper and faster.
absurdo · 21h ago
> As I’ve written before, there are few institutions, or people, with a higher approval rating than Dolly Parton. While I love her for her music and the feeling of joy she gives us, I also love that Dollywood Express, the heritage steam train that operates within Dollywood, has a higher rail ridership than 27 states.
Oh I’d ride that, alright!
chrisco255 · 1d ago
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 America, but even those often get low ridership. It's likely we'll shift towards autonomous mini-buses and electric over the next couple of decades and unlikely that anything changes significantly wrt passenger rail. There are real structural and societal differences here.
I say that and at the same time, I'd love it if Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga were all connected by a high speed rail line (and on down to Atlanta from there). I just don't see the will to get it done.
conception · 1d ago
Best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, etc etc.
pizzathyme · 23h ago
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.
WorldMaker · 21h ago
Density follows infrastructure more than infrastructure follows density. Building a station in a place is more likely to spring up new businesses (and residences) around it. It's not a guarantee and there are a lot of variables in play, but the same reason train stations wouldn't remain "20 minute drive to get to where you are going" are basically the same reasons on average most Interstate stops aren't "20 minute drive to get to where you are going" either.
The density map of the US already resembles the US highway map. Many of the few pockets that don't are explainable with old passenger train maps overlaid on top of that.
Just adding passenger train-only routes on top of existing interstate highways, stopping only at existing exits, would go a long way to service a lot of the US population. It would also presumably spur more walkability efforts at a number of those exits if it was also a passenger train stop.
NoGravitas · 3h ago
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 fuck-all to do with whether rail lines would be useful in the parts of the US where people actually live.
cycomanic · 22h ago
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.
NoGravitas · 3h ago
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.
TimTheTinker · 21h ago
OP wasn't making a shallow excuse. But this rebuttal does lack nuance :)
The overlapping network effects OP mentioned of how modern metropolises were built, combined with modern bureaucracy, make widespread passenger rail an exceedingly difficult political and economic proposal - far more difficult than it would have been 100 or even 50 years ago.
I'm sure others have mentioned this here, but look at how high-speed rail in California is faring for a good example of the political difficulty involved. The legal hurdles, environmental reports, back-and-forth bargaining between varying levels of government, the NGOs that need to be called in and paid a lot... it's not at all easy. And that's before you get to the structural mismatch between widespread rail transport and all the network effects that led to car culture.
Perhaps Tennessee can fare better due to it being a comparatively very conservative state (which currently codes as having less regulatory burden). But I'm not holding out hope.
hinkley · 23h ago
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 still do the same in New England?
dylan604 · 23h ago
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.
const_cast · 19h ago
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.
dylan604 · 18h ago
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
hinkley · 1h ago
We also just plowed through black and Hispanic neighborhoods and we are less cavalier about such things now.
hinkley · 22h ago
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.
breaker-kind · 23h ago
horse ownership is very high,
Spivak · 23h ago
Sure but cars replaced horse ownership 1-1. The thing that's high is personal transportation. If whatever you propose as an alternative doesn't confer the benefits of personal transportation then adoption is likely to be quite low. Ride services took off even though busses were already there because it was personal transportation for hire.
Even in countries that don't have the structural problems the US has that lead to cars you still see personal transportation, be it vehicles or motorized bikes, thriving and the preferred means of travel.
tomjakubowski · 23h ago
It was not a 1-1 replacement. The rate of private horse ownership was not nearly so high back in the day as the rate of private automobile ownership is today. Today in the United States there are 284 million registered vehicles. Almost one car for every person. The American horse population peaked at 25 million in 1920, when the human population was at 102 million.
People also used oxen and mules for personal transport (we don't even have numbers for these and the equine count is probably less than accurate as well), back when the population was less than 70 million (and couples had upwards of 8 or 9 children frequently, so much of the population was younger) before mass migration at the turn of the century (itself made possible by advances in transportation with steam engines in use at sea and by rail). By 1920 cars were already commonplace, but either way, most of the population was doing subsistence farming in the late 1800s and went to town maybe once or twice a month for supplies. We were much poorer before cars, and raising and maintaining a horse requires land and resources.
You can see SF in 1906 as cars started to take the place of horse and buggy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHkc83XA2dY. The early automobiles even fit the same profile as a buggy.
siver_john · 23h ago
I mean the passenger train from Lebanon, TN to Nashville, TN is quite busy. I rode it over a decade ago and it was quite used and my partner rides it now and it is much the same. If it still ran at night like it did back then, I'd probably take it into downtown (and go downtown more often) for events. I don't believe the train left the station a long time ago, we just simply shifted it off the tracks.
benji-york · 21h ago
> I mean the passenger train from Lebanon, TN to Nashville, TN is quite busy.
From the article:
> Outside of Amtrak’s once-daily City of New Orleans, Tennessee has only three rail transit systems (two of which are currently suspended). That leaves just the WeGo Star in Nashville, which is among the lowest-ridership commuter rail lines in the country.
bobajeff · 23h ago
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.
NoblePublius · 23h ago
“ 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 people have the freedom to choose personal transportation.
Over 90% of American households have at least one car. It’s not because American government doesn’t invest in public transit. It’s because Americans, even poor Americans, overwhelmingly choose personal transportation.
richiebful1 · 23h ago
Certainly there's an element of personal choice. I currently live in a town of 3,000 in a rural state that was previously served by trains. Once cars became accessible to the masses, that train service was no longer sustainable.
But in actual US metro areas where much of the country lives, land use choices were made to enhance moving cars at the expense of other modes of transport. Urban areas were bulldozed to funnel cars into downtowns from far-flung suburbs. Amsterdam, on the other hand, was once a car-loving city, but has chosen to redevelop streets for transit and active transportation. Personal choice matters, but how much is driven by incentives?
NoblePublius · 1h ago
“Land use choices” are downstream of what residents want less what they can afford. You have it backwards.
jandrese · 23h ago
> 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.
NoblePublius · 1h ago
Again, you have it backwards. Penn Station went bankrupt in the 1960s because rail passenger volume didn’t match the projections made in the 40s and 50s. Most American, even poor Americans, could afford cars, so they bought them. The only way mass transit (it doesn’t have to be public) works is either in dense urban environments or with a society too poor to afford alternatives. I’m not making a pro car argument or anti transit market. I’m just pointing out the actual forces that influence the creation and usage of all transit.
bpt3 · 22h ago
It is built in major metro areas, and requires endless subsidies to stay afloat in all but one of those areas.
Public transit cannot compete with private transit outside of cost unless you have a very, very high population density, which makes it unpopular with people who can afford alternatives (i.e. almost all Americans).
cycomanic · 21h ago
> 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.
Let's not even talk about all the externalities like land cost of those roads especially in metropolitan areas.
bpt3 · 4h ago
> 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 transportation makes absolutely no sense in rural areas, so I'm not sure what your point is here.
> If you would make people pay for their road use, rural living would very quickly become unsustainable for most.
People do pay for road use, via fuel taxes, so again I'm not sure what your point is here.
> Let's not even talk about all the externalities like land cost of those roads especially in metropolitan areas.
Feel free to talk about it in detail, instead of playing the usual "Oh, the externalities! Why won't anyone think of the externalities!" game I see over and over from public transit advocates.
const_cast · 19h ago
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.
bpt3 · 4h ago
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 financial sense to take public transportation if you value your time at all or are traveling as a group (which families do regularly) and look at out of pocket costs.
Third, you (as with other transit advocates, which I will assume you are based on this comment, feel free to correct me) completely miss the point even though I explicitly stated it. Even if roads are significantly more expensive, Americans can afford it and are willing to pay for the massive increase in convenience. If that changes, then spending patterns should change as well.
And I say all this as someone who prefers living in a walkable area and lives close to a public transit and uses it when it makes sense (which is not often, despite my work also being very close to a stop on the same line I live on).
jandrese · 1h ago
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.
That's only for state and local government from what I can tell, and they could offset increases in fuel taxes by reducing things like property taxes if desired. Federal highway spending has almost entirely been covered by federal fuel tax revenue, but a recent ramp up in spending without increasing revenue now has the put the trust fund at risk of depletion.
Americans would suddenly be interested in small cars again, which seems like a win to me, because there's almost nothing that will make them desire public transit despite what some hope for.
jandrese · 30m ago
There is another monkeywrench in road funding. Use taxes are mostly from fuel taxes, which electric vehicles don't pay. As the vehicle fleet electrifies that gap will need to be covered somehow.
pjc50 · 19h ago
Timeline is wrong. Most of the European rail infrastructure (and indeed American) was built before WW1, quite a lot before WW1.
The critical ingredient wasn't wealth per se but oil. Which also determined the lines of attack and victory in the war.
NoblePublius · 1h ago
America built train tracks at the same time and the rail
Operators went bust post WW2 because Americans stopped taking trains.
omegaworks · 23h ago
>its people have the freedom to choose personal transportation.
A lot of American choice is an illusion. The national expressway network was created to serve national security purposes. Beloved trolley systems in medium density cities were unceremoniously ripped out. Car and tire companies pushed the bus-ification of public transport in order to kill any notion that it should offer comfort and reliability.
The American government refuses to invest in density because its sees sprawl as a deterrant against nuclear threat. (A threat that it takes an active role in escalating, mind you.)
>It’s because Americans, even poor Americans, overwhelmingly choose personal transportation.
If you take notice, much of the most expensive and valuable property in this country is in dense regions where it is possible to live without a car. If Americans truly had a choice, they'd pick the kinds of walkable communities they can only experience now on university campuses and in theme parks.
NoblePublius · 1h ago
It’s funny to me that you think people were forced to by cars by “ripping out trolleys” when it was the buying of cars that did that.
breaker-kind · 23h ago
and we are severely worse off because of it
amiga386 · 22h ago
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
* 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):
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
bpt3 · 22h ago
I came here to say this as well.
I don't know why public transit nerds can't accept that their preferences are wildly unpopular with the American public at large, why they can't understand that public transit is a substandard option for anyone who isn't a single, healthy individual of limited means in a relatively urban area (which in case it's not clear, is a tiny percentage of the US population), or why they ignore that almost every human on Earth chooses to buy a private vehicle as soon as they can afford it.
We'd go to Dollywood a few times a year - she would give out free tickets to people who worked in Gatlinburg to go. It's really well run, and their water park is great too. Growing up, we'd ride the train when we visited. While I didn't appreciate it much as a kid, when I grew up I realized how awesome of an opportunity that was.. I moved away from Tennessee about 12 years ago, one of the biggest things I have missed is Dollywood and their big steam train.
Words cannot describe the love and admiration myself and the vast majority of Tennesseans have for Dolly Parton. She is the closest thing to a living Saint that many of us will ever witness.
Imagination Library is mostly an umbrella organization that provides logistical support to the many, many locally-funded groups that actually send the books.
She's very kind, and apparently very charming and down-to-earth despite having a deity-quality voice, but she's also really smart and knows how to leverage her celebrity to help people.
If you've never listened to it, watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMrfM711vXI - it's "Jolene", one of her most famous songs, but slowed down like it was a 45 RPM single played at 33 1/3 RPM like an LP. Not a single note is off, even that slowly.
A visit to the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area and the Smoky Mountains is great trip, especially with kids. Lots of quirky nonsense to enjoy, as well as some beautiful nature.
(That is, I should "fix that" by going up to the Smokies with them, not by getting rid of the kids!)
I grew up in metro Atlanta and some of my favorite childhood memories are of family trips to the Smokies.
Mingus mill is one of my favorite places in the world.
I live in Chattanooga now and we take the kids every 6 months or so.
We all had a blast and didn't expect to love it so much. Just a fantastic place and they are doing a great job.
I don't now if it's useful, but this way of putting quanties in context, would be neat to see about all kinds of things. Like how they seem to always do rare things compared to your chance of getting hit by lightning.
What's feasible for a theme park doesn't necessarily extrapolate to public transit.
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 donut to get there.
There is a trolley system but it is anemic.
Part of Tennessee's charm is how far you can get with a smile and "Gosh, I hate to bother you, but could you..."
My husband and I were driving a camouflaged CUCV (military bronco) from VA to WV around Thanksgiving. Towing a trailer full of stuff and had four large dogs.
The truck died. In Virginia, one mile from the WV line. Someone picked me up and dropped me off at the first gas station so I could call AAA. I had to talk with several CSRs; the last one told me the closest tow truck was in Charlottesville, hours away from where we were on I64. I was beet red, smoking like a chimney, and making up curse words.
Once we kinda agreed that there was likely a closer alternative, the young woman asked how the tow truck driver would identify the truck since it was camo. I told the men, they chuckled, and I told her it was CAMO, it was not covered by a cloaking device. I hung up.
The young man at the gas station/coffee shop called a local tow truck and we were dropped at Gate 3 of fair grounds in Fairlee, WV.
Ended up that the camo/cloaking device paled in comparison to the later challenge: It was the first day of hunting season and most garages were closed during the week of Thanksgiving.
I hate AAA.
I know some new models don't include spares, but they often have run flats and temp sealant kits included.
What are the other options?
We also would have had a better shot at not having our tire blow out if the closest gas station wasn’t 10 miles away.
For some reason, it's always a Nissan.
If you have a pulse and a recent paystub, you can get financing from Nissan.
Ergo, if you want the cheapest car you can get, it'll probably be a Nissan.
* Before the late-10s Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi insanity
It's wild how that one man managed to change the entire path of a once great brand.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/adulting-101-life-skills...
I would describe that as "inconvenient" but actually very fortunate!
Walmart was only 15 miles away? You have a donut/spare, or AAA has provided you with one? That's lucky! Nowhere near "problem" territory at all.
Just an interruption to your schedule, but that happens on road trips.
(Fyi, if anyone reading this does ever use that sealant stuff, when you get to a proper repair shop TELL THEM about the sealant before I pop the bead and spray it all over the shop.)
Turns an "omg" problem into "eh, hold my beer..." for 99% of tire punctures.
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!)
If Denmark population 6 million people and 141 people per/km^2 has zero issue with trains then Florida a flat state population 22 million population density 163/km^2 should be full of them.
And it’s not alone. MD has 6 million people and 246/km^2, Massachusetts 7 million 347/km^2, New Jersey 9.3 million and 488 people / km^2.
Further, if you consider the road network the overwhelming majority of roads are in high populations density areas. NYC alone has ~1/6 as many road miles as the entire interstate highway system which criss cross the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System It’s a classic edge to surface area problem, 10,000 acre farms need 1/100 the roads per acre as 1 acre suburban homes. The same kind of scaling applies to rail networks.
We had a viable rail network all over the country as recently as the early 1950s. Federal policy blew it up because dispersing the population was seen as a civil defense priority for an atomic war, and cars and airplanes provided an economic engine to keep workers and returning soldiers employed.
Later, the shift to rural industry and trucking was a way to break unions. Meatpacking transformed from a good union gig back to an oppressive industry fueled by undocumented labor. If the workers acted up, the owners would realize they knew where a bunch of undocumented people lived and call in INS/ICE.
Do you have a citation for this?
(I'm not necessarily doubting, it's just a claim I have not heard before).
Also google the “Clay report”, there’s a bunch of books and sources from there.
At this point, (1955) bombers and fission bombs were the threat. That’s why we had AT&T invest in hardened long lines facilities, shelters and duck and cover.
The reality of hydrogen bombs and ICBMs kind of took the wind out of sails of civil defense. You’re not going to drive out of Manhattan with 20 minutes notice and get to a place where you’ll survive. This really affected the people associated with this — the think tank guys at RAND and other places assumed they’d all be dead by the mid 1970s, and I can’t help to think that it didn’t affect their points of view.
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/
One of the worst places for rail east of the Mississippi.
Parent should have compared Denmark's population density with TN's (65/km^2).
Does this mean it is not worthwhile to build public transit in the European part of Denmark? If not, then why does the population density of the entire US matter in a discussion about Tennessee, a state 80% denser than the American average?
By the way, Finland has both a smaller economy and a way lower population density (18.4 per km^2) than Denmark and the US. Would railways be not useful in Finland because of that?
Nearly all of the low population density states are out West.
Works out to about 288 private airports per state on average, and 100 public per state (on average).
https://www.tvrail.com/
In addition to the longer scenic trips, there is regular 6 mile round trip “Missionary Ridge Local” route that could theoretically be used for commuting.
I think my favorite part is when the announcer explains the emergency stop system, and clarifies that getting a cinder in your face doesn't count as an emergency (IIRC they have safety goggles you can wear if you're concerned about it).
EDIT: found a video I took of it going by where you can hear the whistle blow (I was there over the holidays which is why it's decked out for Christmas): https://www.instagram.com/p/B64mteDJUBl/
That said, Big Boy 4014 is traveling between Cheyenne and Denver next month (https://www.up.com/heritage/steam/schedule/index.htm)
There was a joke that made its rounds here round about the time Queen Elizabeth died:
> Bob: "The queen's dead"
> Alice: "Dolly?!"
If you ride the train, be prepared for soot to get in your eyes.
I'm sure Dolly would be tickled silly to know a bunch of computer people were talking about her.
He has a little festival every year on his property:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuibCgyBqJM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_Parton%27s_America
As an East Tennessee native, I love everything Dolly Parton!
You're looking for "Life is as peaceful as a baby's sigh":
https://genius.com/Dolly-parton-my-tennessee-mountain-home-l...
https://www.madhousemagazine.com/elton-john-confirms-tiny-da...
We live in Sevier County, and Dolly offers $5 tickets to her park to locals this week, which is really quite a charitable thing to do. The discount even applies for taking ~$100 off of a season pass.
Never realized that train got so much usage, but I guess it makes sense. Although you do have to pay attention if you sit near the front as you’ll be slightly covered in soot after the ride.
https://youtu.be/Sr2F4OZSETE?si=fh628Gb3RzhpLpYo
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In other words, the Dollywood Express would be a lot less fun if it spent half the day waiting while trolls unload corndogs from two-person handcars randomly distributed along the track.
With nationalized rails, the US could set standards for rail-sharing which could help passenger rail and invest in improved rail connections between cities which would improve both freight and passenger rail service.
Currently, each railroad company gets to maintain their own little fiefdoms in certain parts of the US
https://public.railinc.com/about-railinc/blog/who-owns-railr...
[0] https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance#:~:text=For%20ove...
We got in 4 hours late if I recall and nearly all of that was waiting for freight trains.
I'm not sure who is right in the above, but it is important to at least consider all sides of the argument.
Amtrak seems to stuck on large projects, so we have shelf's full of plans/studies on new lines, but they are all too big to build and still they keep making more.
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.
They got out of that business because it was losing ridership and money.
The scam was in from the beginning. The car helped exacerbate the problem and the train companies made big fusses about all the lost ridership to the car, as things went along, but even at the beginning a lot of the US rail companies were built on the knowledge that cargo was lucrative and passenger travel the necessary trojan horse to pickup land for cheap.
Flip-side, I have heard that the phase-out RMS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Mail_Service ) cut the RR's passenger train revenue by about 1/3. Few business models can survive a 1/3 revenue cut.
BTW - at the high end, airplanes were at least as damaging (to passenger rail) as cars.
I was talking most specifically about the early "oil rush" ones in a lot of "rollover country" (or yes, "flyover country" being the modern term because indeed, air travel also disrupted train travel a lot) that didn't live long enough to be long-established, in the North-East, or bother much at all with opulent terminals and luxury cars. Many of those companies really did exist just long enough for eminent domain to do its job and launder public lands into private hands that cared a lot more about cargo contracts than any of the places the trains stopped along the way.
Most of those rail company names are also kind of lost to time, too, and the tracks are owned by cargo-oriented mega-conglomerates like CSX today. Not to pick on any one in particular by naming names, but also the easiest one to anecdotally name because it owns the dilapidated station I regularly walk past that is today an awful, unsafe shelter for the unhoused that sometimes cargo trains sit on top of for hours at a time, and wasn't particularly "opulent" (outdoor and entirely exposed to the elements) even during the exactly 10 years it operated as a passenger station. (It closed to passenger travel before both most highways had been built and air travel became common, weird huh? Surely just a coincidence that 10 years was the required passenger contract by the eminent domain seizures that opened the land for rail development?)
"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 progress far exceeds that of others to the extent that without significant leadership at the federal level there will certainly be "two Americas".
The city it's in is also right next door to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, so it's very easy to make a day trip for various trails or tours.
My mother has some mobility issues and the park was pretty well laid out for her to get around with an electric scooter. The park has lots of rides for different ages of children. And the surrounding Pigeon Forge area has lots of other attractions to make a jam-packed week of activities.
Reducing public transit to an unserious/unreal thing is the point.
People who live in car-bound places (most of America) visit theme parks like Disney's where a big part of the novelty is the make-believe urban walkability and transit (i.e. Disney's "Main Street"), creating the belief that such things are fantasy (tied to the rest of Disney's make-believe world) rather that something quite normal that people in much of the urban world experience (minus the dancing anthropomorphic mice).
Essentially, what is pretty normal elsewhere is repackaged as fantasy in the US.
Are Dollywood/Disney part of some great conspiracy to undermine walkability and transit in the US? No, but they sure as heck know that people feel better in that kind of human-scale environment, and they are fundamentally in the business of making people feel better via escapism.
We agree with each other. I know they were real in the pre-car era (and I have lived in some of the few remaining walkable US towns and cities), but note that my comment was speaking the present tense, not the past tense like yours.
Walkability is not the average American's lived reality today. In fact, living in a walkable area tends to be a marker of heightened privilege nowadays, sadly.
Would highly recommend a château trip down the Loire valley over Disney. ;)
And if you really need a faux fix, there's always Mini Castle Park [2] near Amboise...
[0] https://domaine-chaumont.fr/en
[1] https://www.chenonceau.com/en/
[2] https://www.parcminichateaux.com/
PS: Yes, I know Neuschwanstein, but haven't made it to Bavaria yet. On the list!
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 build it fast enough.
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).
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.
I'm sure some people did think that. But in my experience, many more people thought they were horrible candidates that showed the Democrat party cared more about rewarding insiders than actually winning the election.
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.
I'm sure Nevada wouldn't be on this list if the Las Vegas Monorail were included. Average daily ridership was 11,780 in 2022, and it can reach around 40,000 daily riders on peak conference days.
So...why do they exclude the "City of New Orleans"? They don't explain.
Also, if you're ever in Pennsylvania and go to the train museum in Strasburg you can ride that steam train as well and it is also a blast.
Oof. That's a lot of coal. ~ 1000 tons of coal/year or the CO2 equivalent of 10 million miles of driving.
Edit: corrected math
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bflkeWVTNk0
Bikes only, with a train station to a larger city.
I think theirs a project like this in Arizona.
Oh I’d ride that, alright!
I say that and at the same time, I'd love it if Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga were all connected by a high speed rail line (and on down to Atlanta from there). I just don't see the will to get it done.
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.
The density map of the US already resembles the US highway map. Many of the few pockets that don't are explainable with old passenger train maps overlaid on top of that.
Just adding passenger train-only routes on top of existing interstate highways, stopping only at existing exits, would go a long way to service a lot of the US population. It would also presumably spur more walkability efforts at a number of those exits if it was also a passenger train stop.
The overlapping network effects OP mentioned of how modern metropolises were built, combined with modern bureaucracy, make widespread passenger rail an exceedingly difficult political and economic proposal - far more difficult than it would have been 100 or even 50 years ago.
I'm sure others have mentioned this here, but look at how high-speed rail in California is faring for a good example of the political difficulty involved. The legal hurdles, environmental reports, back-and-forth bargaining between varying levels of government, the NGOs that need to be called in and paid a lot... it's not at all easy. And that's before you get to the structural mismatch between widespread rail transport and all the network effects that led to car culture.
Perhaps Tennessee can fare better due to it being a comparatively very conservative state (which currently codes as having less regulatory burden). But I'm not holding out hope.
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.
Even in countries that don't have the structural problems the US has that lead to cars you still see personal transportation, be it vehicles or motorized bikes, thriving and the preferred means of travel.
https://www.howardweinsteinbooks.com/single-post/2017/07/05/...
You can see SF in 1906 as cars started to take the place of horse and buggy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHkc83XA2dY. The early automobiles even fit the same profile as a buggy.
From the article:
> Outside of Amtrak’s once-daily City of New Orleans, Tennessee has only three rail transit systems (two of which are currently suspended). That leaves just the WeGo Star in Nashville, which is among the lowest-ridership commuter rail lines in the country.
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 people have the freedom to choose personal transportation.
Over 90% of American households have at least one car. It’s not because American government doesn’t invest in public transit. It’s because Americans, even poor Americans, overwhelmingly choose personal transportation.
But in actual US metro areas where much of the country lives, land use choices were made to enhance moving cars at the expense of other modes of transport. Urban areas were bulldozed to funnel cars into downtowns from far-flung suburbs. Amsterdam, on the other hand, was once a car-loving city, but has chosen to redevelop streets for transit and active transportation. Personal choice matters, but how much is driven by incentives?
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.
Public transit cannot compete with private transit outside of cost unless you have a very, very high population density, which makes it unpopular with people who can afford alternatives (i.e. almost all Americans).
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.
Let's not even talk about all the externalities like land cost of those roads especially in metropolitan areas.
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 transportation makes absolutely no sense in rural areas, so I'm not sure what your point is here.
> If you would make people pay for their road use, rural living would very quickly become unsustainable for most.
People do pay for road use, via fuel taxes, so again I'm not sure what your point is here.
> Let's not even talk about all the externalities like land cost of those roads especially in metropolitan areas.
Feel free to talk about it in detail, instead of playing the usual "Oh, the externalities! Why won't anyone think of the externalities!" game I see over and over from public transit advocates.
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.
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 financial sense to take public transportation if you value your time at all or are traveling as a group (which families do regularly) and look at out of pocket costs.
Third, you (as with other transit advocates, which I will assume you are based on this comment, feel free to correct me) completely miss the point even though I explicitly stated it. Even if roads are significantly more expensive, Americans can afford it and are willing to pay for the massive increase in convenience. If that changes, then spending patterns should change as well.
And I say all this as someone who prefers living in a walkable area and lives close to a public transit and uses it when it makes sense (which is not often, despite my work also being very close to a stop on the same line I live on).
[1] https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...
Americans would suddenly be interested in small cars again, which seems like a win to me, because there's almost nothing that will make them desire public transit despite what some hope for.
The critical ingredient wasn't wealth per se but oil. Which also determined the lines of attack and victory in the war.
A lot of American choice is an illusion. The national expressway network was created to serve national security purposes. Beloved trolley systems in medium density cities were unceremoniously ripped out. Car and tire companies pushed the bus-ification of public transport in order to kill any notion that it should offer comfort and reliability.
The American government refuses to invest in density because its sees sprawl as a deterrant against nuclear threat. (A threat that it takes an active role in escalating, mind you.)
>It’s because Americans, even poor Americans, overwhelmingly choose personal transportation.
If you take notice, much of the most expensive and valuable property in this country is in dense regions where it is possible to live without a car. If Americans truly had a choice, they'd pick the kinds of walkable communities they can only experience now on university campuses and in theme parks.
* 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
I don't know why public transit nerds can't accept that their preferences are wildly unpopular with the American public at large, why they can't understand that public transit is a substandard option for anyone who isn't a single, healthy individual of limited means in a relatively urban area (which in case it's not clear, is a tiny percentage of the US population), or why they ignore that almost every human on Earth chooses to buy a private vehicle as soon as they can afford it.