There really is a magical difference that happens when transit headways drop below 10 minutes. You essentially never have to consult a schedule, because you know a bus or train will be along shortly, and transfers are relatively painless, because schedule coordination isn’t an issue. When headways become long (and one hour headways are VERY BAD), then advance trip planning becomes a major factor in riding transit, and scheduling transfers becomes tricky, both for the transit agency and its riders.
yeah my city’s buses come every 40 minutes to an hour meaning you really have to plan and if you’re taking the bus somewhere you have to plan to stay there for a while because no quick trips are possible due to the shitty frequency
Scott Atwood in London 5 minutes is bad on the tube and on lines they come every 90 seconds but down here (just 1hour away from London) trains come every hour
Tobey Transport , 5 minute headways really isn’t bad at all on any transit system, as that means the average wait time for riders is only 2.5 minutes. A 90 second headway is superb, and achieving anything higher than that would be exceedingly difficult because dwell time to load and unload passengers become a major factor with shorter dwell times.
The 20 minutes interval for the busses is not as it seems. Disney runs busses at least every 20 min but more frequently at expected peak times and also dynamically when there are many people waiting. It also uses a dynamic system where busses only get their next route just prior to reaching the last destination. This allows disney to dynamically send busses to stations with the most passengers waiting. That would be an interesting topic for a video.
I was going to say pretty much the same thing. I also don't think the monorail frequency is accurate either. Usually the monorail tends to be around 3-4 minute frequencies on the resort line, 4-5 on the express, and closer to 10 on the EPCOT line.
Does accessibility fits into one of those categories ? Maybe "It respects me" ? It's a real issue since many transit systems arent totally (or even partially ) accessible. Sometimes disabled people can use them but it still takes unnecessary effort because their needs are largely ignored.
I'd say it counts. I'm pleased to say accessibility is something increasingly being paid the attention it deserves. There's a long way to go, especially refurbishing older transit systems, but it looks like steady improvement ahead.
Walt Disney World does better that many transit systems, particularly in its newer transit modes. All of its transit vehicles accommodate users with mobility needs, and the new ropeway system even splits the loading area, so that those who need extra time and assistance, or can’t board a slowly moving gondola car can board without slowing or stopping the main queue of vehicles.
Fairly sure it gets into that. Here while accessibility isn't very well, there are loads of staff members around to help you, so it's not that much of a problem once they're notified.
"It respects me" is the single worst aspect of American transit in general--the reluctance of authorities and the members of the general public less reliant on transit (usually richer, of advantaged races and conservative-minded) often have visceral issues with spending more public resources to ensure that the people most reliant on transit (poor, racial minorities) get a transportation system that allows them to lead a dignified life.
I used to work with the bus system at WDW. One of the biggest issues we had to deal with were the riders. Most people who visit WDW are somewhat wealthy and often do not use or have never used public transportation. This would result in riders being very upset if the bus was a few minutes late or if the bus had too many fellow riders. I do want to point out that although the routes are mostly direct from hotel to park. Many buses go to multiple hotels on the same line or have multiple stops at larger hotels which can add delays. Great video I have been watching you over the past few years and enjoy all of your content continue the great work!
Geoffrey Sierzant I don’t think wealth is that big a factor in predicting if people have used public transportation before their travel to WDW; I suspect availability of public transportation in the guests’ hometown is a much bigger factor.
@@jpe1 Good point money isn't the best predictor. I guess my point is most riders of a transportation system in daliy life are much more lenient or less bothered by small issues. Than those who rarely use or have never used mass transit. I truly think Disney runs a good system.
Yeah, I suspect that given how bad public transit is in most of the US, and how little it is utilized, a vacation at Walt Disney World may be many Americans first real experience with using public transit. For those familiar with using public transit, WDW transit feels pretty normal, but if you have only ever gotten around by personal vehicle, the transit to public transit might be a bit jarring.
@@stoutyyyy And middle-class US suburbanites too. I tend to use public transit in every city I visit, and my daily commute these days is on a motor coach, but I know people who are baffled that I don't just call an Uber for all purposes. Many people who never use subways or buses find them scary to ride.
well to be fair they don't really have the problem of city politics. if they want to have a bus driving there it will happen. there won't be any one complaining about the noise from that bus. or because they want to build a new bus stop there won't be a other business owning the extra space.
sirBrouwer yup! Disney has great public transit for the same reason that countries with authoritarian governments like China have great public transit, no member of the public is allowed to complain about it or suggest a different way of doing it. The only way Walt Disney was able to implement his vision of “utopia” was to create his own municipality and run it as a total dictatorship, not really a viable choice anywhere else in the USA.
It’s entirely possible to have great public transit without an authoritarian government. It just doesn’t seem to happen much in the US. I have lived without a car in both Berlin and Tokyo, and it is incredibly easy to get around both cities, quickly and conveniently on transit. In fact, in Tokyo, much of the transit is actually run profitably by private companies!
@@ScottAtwood The key is your last sentence "Private Companies" .. the government, at least in the US, is more concerned with looking busy and lining pockets than being effective, so we don't get nice things. Business 100% about effectiveness because it maximizes profit and are better at management.
gi70st, I was just giving that as an example that great public transit doesn’t necessarily require an authoritarian government. It also doesn’t require a profit-driven private company either. New York City has some of the best public transit in the US, and it is run by a government agency.
I come from Singapore and before I watched this video, I never realised how stupid it sounded when I say I get mad at the transport system. I get mad when the buses come at 13 minutes frequency and the trains are slightly delayed. During peak hours, our buses come every 5-7 minutes (or 2-3 minutes for those with high ridership) and trains come every 2 minutes. That's incredible. I'm never taking my transit for granted again. I just wished you'd critique our transit but that's far from the States!
I’m almost positive Disney made sure it’s transporting system gets you to all the places you need or want to go so you can spend more money lol That might be the good side of a controlled design city, transport is highly important because they want people to come back.
I think this comment actually hits on an important reality with transit. Not only is good transit good for people, but it tends to benefit towns and cities too. The more people you can move and get to where they want to go, generally speaking, the better off local businesses are, and the stronger the local economy can be! Good transit has far more capacity than roads ever will, and Disney figured that one out a while ago 🎉
Disney’s transportation system is so good, when the fireworks show was over and suddenly everyone had to leave the park, the calm efficiency of thousands upon thousands of people being transported out left just as much of an impression on me as the fireworks themselves. I vividly remember looking out and seeing the huge crowds and all the modes working together with no sign of chaos.
As a subscriber to Biffa's traffic fix series I can only shake my head at some of the transit lines (especially bus lines with _too many buses_ !) making traffic worse rather than better.
The Walt Disney Company used to have a mass-transit division for building monorail and WEDway PeopleMover systems. The division created, for example, a PeopleMover system for Houston's international airport.
10 minute frequency would obviously be the ideal but I'd argue anything more then 30 minutes is unacceptable especially on a system that requires frequent transfers
Hey, I live in a country where you should consider yourself lucky if you get a 30 minute interval. Many services even in fairly large cities are hourly or less, and some get to 90 or 120 minute intervals or longer. They also tend to stop pretty far away from where you'd want to go. Add to that the tendency for the services to operate during a fairly narrow range of hours and yeah... Most people drive... The extremely long distances and slow speeds don't help either. When it takes a bus 90 minutes to get to it's destination and a train 2 hours to get from the edge of the network to the centre... Yeah, it all adds up to some serious frustration. Nothing like long distance travel of course. Here it's not 'lucky if it's every 30 minutes), or 'lucky if it's every hour' No, it's lucky if there's more than one service a day... And for many routes it even manages to be lucky if it's more than one service a week. I missed a long distance train once. Was stuck there until the following day... And that's a fairly high frequency route as it goes (technically 3 services a day each direction, but they're often booked out for good measure.) Yeah, bad public transport sucks...
@@KuraIthys that's worse! I would not even call that a commuter network. Statistically more people drive than take public transport in Sydney, but without it our city wouldn't function as the roads can't really handle what we have now.
@@Yelrebmikkim that's really the case with most public transportation networks at least in the western world, a low precentage actually use it but without it that extra 5 or 10% on the road would absolutely destroy the road network
Good idea, but monorails tend to be more expensive than light rail or subways, particularly because they “have” to be in the air. They just have to build a flexible system that can quickly transport people around the city without driving. My pick: light rail.
Monorails are cool, but often not a great choice for public transit. Track switches are common need for fixed route systems, and switching equipment for monorails is particularly complex and expensive.
One problem with WDW's bus system is that sometimes, you actually do want to go from one hotel to another--for instance, some of the best restaurants on property are at the hotels (such as the ones at Animal Kingdom Lodge), and you might want to visit one where you're not staying. Traveling between hotels is a laborious process because you typically have to ride to a theme park or to Disney Springs, then change buses. Many such trips do require a good hour to complete, and you have to factor that in when planning dinner reservations. I was really impressed by the water-taxi system at Universal Orlando when I was staying on property there. It's a smaller area than Disney World, so they can run little boats really frequently and get you to the parks in just a few minutes--it had that frictionless feeling of freedom that I didn't really get in Disney's system.
I totally agree with what you say about hotel-to-hotel. Sometimes the best bet is to just drive your car if you have one on property. I haven't stayed at any of the Universal hotels before but that boat system sounds good and I'm sure it's probably pretty easy to get to City Walk.
I operated the Monorail trains at WDW about 7 years ago. Yes, those poor things are so old, and breakdowns were becoming common by the time I left. We always strived to make guests feel safe and welcome even with our delays and shutdowns, but people tend to get testy when on vacation. Monorail Blue is the oldest one! We would only operate at most 9 trains at a time, as the other 3 were rotated for parts--many times they'd have to be cannibalized for repairs because the company that used to make them no longer exists.
Oof, rip monorails...youd she with all Disney's Bing money they need to be able to get people to figure out how the parts were made and just make them themselves, unfortunately the reason they have so much money is because they don't care about preserving stuff like ol bessy...
I experienced multiple monorail breakdowns on my visit in 2018. The worst one being after the fireworks one night when it completely failed. The boats couldn't cope so they had poor young employees with megaphones telling people to walk to bay number X at the bus station and buses were operating to take people back to TTC. The reality is that there were no buses operating and many hundreds of unhappy people were queued like cattle.
@@TS_Mind_Swept, don't forget, maintenance doesn't generate revenue. Because CORPORATE GREED has become Disney's top priority, they will never do more than the bare minimum for anything that doesn't generate a quick profit. This was never Walt Disney's approach to anything. It all began when Michael Eisner showed-up.
What are you talking about? The current Mark VI fleet was manufactured by Bombardier. That company very much still exists and is rumored to be contracted to build the new fleet.
Why is it that skyliners/ski lift style transportation is almost exclusively used in themeparks/resorts. I understand i am not well traveled and they are point to point but it seems like there should be some use case in urban areas. (Possibly from a train hub to the middle of a shopping district, but it could also just a price factor)
@@jasonreed7522 Rio de Janeiro used them to access favelas that were too densely built for buses or trains, without tearing down a lot of homes. I recall discussions of their feasibility for London when I lived in the UK, but I don't know how seriously. There were a lot of fanciful proposals put out there in a certain period.
Under respects it's riders, I would add the subcriteria of "communicates outages, closures, etc." I would argue it's separate from "reliable" because it's not so much about how often there's an outage or delay, but whether the agency respects the riders enough to thoroughly communicate these events, both planned and unplanned. For the record, WMATA in DC would actually do pretty well in this category, despite the numerous and far too frequent closures, outages, and delays. They do a fairly good job of communicating those events (maybe because they have so much practice at it).
Fully agree about reliability - the complete lack of any contingency plan for the regular monorail breakdowns is pathetic. You don't need to go very far to find another operator with poor reliability and absolutely zero interest in advising passengers of buses running very late: GoLynx in Orlando is hopeless.
@@kc3302 I wouldn't think that would be a huge issue for most Disney guests. Every hotel basically has buses to every park. Some resorts are close enough to walk or have other modes like boats. The monorail goes very few places in Disney World. I've always hoped they'd add a few more lines to make it easier to jump between resorts.
To be fair, monorail lines tend to be quite small and scarce when used for city transit. Its rupture with the "norm" of "fixed guideway systems" are supposed to be conventional two rails makes them be perceived as impractically niche, and usually only get used at unconventional settings, such as airport's internal transit, theme parks or select parts of major cities built with special events in mind.
@@stoutyyyy Not true you can drink at all of them, although Magic Kingdom you need to be a table service restaurant. Fun fact: Walt was 100% against selling alcohol in the parks and would get real mad at people that constantly suggested it, but recently the desire for the $ ultimately won out and its available at all the parks now lol.
@@TheLocalLt No that is not true at all. All the historians who have studied Walt have said that's not true, even the Jews who worked for him said that's not true.
Tell that to everyone who lives juuuust outside of Moscow, since they can't afford to live inside it, but also can't afford to have their windshield wipers/mirrors/freaking *wheels* stolen. Why do you think those "park here and enter metro" things are unpopular? This is Russia, any car far away from a vigilant owner is vulnerable. And so it is the struggle, the struggle of standing in gridlock wasting time, gasoline or propane. And that's if you have a driving license. If you don't - you stand in gridlock in a bus, at 6 AM because you have to wake up at 5 to get to work on time. I hope the pandemic changes the landscape of work, and at least half the people who can work remotely will work remotely. That's up to a quarter of the workforce (since about half can work remotely, but people are stubborn and stupid). Cities like Moscow will sigh a temporary relief... because once it's clear the roads are more well functioning again - we're back to square one, but this time with the people who left being replaced with some amount of people who had a car, but previously used public transport because they could and it's faster than traffic jams. Cars are a solution that became a problem. What we need is... basically that uber that lets you share it with other passengers (it's unavailable in Russia, BTW), but be mandatory for all drivers (for example for any car entering the city centre), and at the bare cost of gasoline+oil. Or maybe that driverless taxi Tesla is making. If you kill the profession of a taxi driver by offering rides at the cost cheaper than carsharing app (because electric+driverless, so less accidents and therefore lower insurance), and even better if you could share these rides, again, like in that uber type that's unavailable in Russia. That would seriously challenge the cost and effectiveness of car ownership and driving in the city.
The trams in Melbourne's CBD are an absolute godsend for visitors. They are free so you don't need a transit card, run on every street in both directions, and are so frequent the entire street will be practically filled on streets with multiple lines. The result is, if you think, "hey, I want to go that way", you walk up to the stop, get on, and get off a few minutes later. You don't need google maps, line maps or transport officers to explain, it's absolutely fantastic. The only one of the seven points it falls short of is reliability during peak, but like I said there are so many (frequency is so high) and distance is relatively short (within the CBD I'm talking) so it literally doesn't matter.
"You're not gonna ride transit if it get's you to work on time one day but doesn't the next" Oh right I forgot about those people who have other ways to get to work/school but choose public transport unlike me who has no choice in it and just have to hope that the train/bus is not late
Are you younger than 18? Or are you in, like, africa or south east asia? Get a crappy car for less than $400 and work on it yourself. A car that might not start every morning is still more reliable than crappy public transportation, I can tell you that much. Because you can fix or push start a car, but you can't fix or push start a train or a bus, since they're not there.
Free public transport was tested in Dunkerque, France. Turns out, more people went out shopping downtown as a result, so the city had more tax income and ended up making up more money than with a paid transit system
This video combines two of my favorite things. Disney and public transit. And it looks like many of your other videos appeal to me too. Congrats, City Beautiful, you've just got yourself a new subscriber.
Former WDW VIP Tour Guide here. I used Disney Transport literally daily as part of my job and free time. It is clean, safe, and reliable. It isn't "free" but is prepaid and certainly doesn't face annual funding issues- a major burden in the "real world". Just like its real world counterparts, there's "rush hours", peak capacities, and valleys of empty vehicles. Considering the variety and origin of its guests, and their ability to generally get where they want to, in an unfamiliar environment, possibly in a foreign language, and for only a limited duration ("Yeah, me & the wife figured out on our 2d to last day, we could've taken _____ and saved an hour..."), I think Disney Transport does an outstanding job. I do wish they'd just bite the bullet and both expand and improve the Monorail System. It is, by far, the Guest's favorite mode of transport. It captures the imagination with its design, sleek lines, and quiet comfortable ride above everyone else. The argument is cost, but if you know about Reedy Creek and LBV, then you realize Disney effectively sets its own sales tax rate on property. That means they CAN fund it with virtually zero uproar, conflict, or even knowledge of the taxpayer's awareness that they're paying it.
Fun video! I was really fascinated by Disney World's trasit system when I visited and finally found a video that talks about it! Here in Bangalore, we don't have widespread metro connectivity yet which means buses are the primary mode of public transit. The bus network follows the hub-and-spoke model, resulting in many trips requiring atleast one bus transfer. I wonder what could be done to improve the experience. The city has about 6000 buses, which means frequency isn't an issue in most areas. For example, my stop has about 25 - 30 routes serving it with a peak-time headway of 45 seconds to a minute. Most other areas have a headway of 5 to 10 minutes.
Observation - While many guests use the monorail and ferry to visit the Magic Kingdom (and all of the parks), a significant portion use the bus system (which is still part of the wider discussion, but isn't your quoted 40 million on monorails/boats figure). Also, more sprawling resorts like Caribbean Beach or All Stars have multiple stops for each wing of the hotel. They're spaced a few minutes apart, much like a commuter line that picks up at a few locations before heading downtown (or to the park in this case) so many routes do indeed have more than a point A/B. And during peak times, the express monorail is running 3-4 minute intervals.
Mochamad Fachri, yes, this is certainly true, so a real city will necessarily have a larger and more complex mass transit network than WDW, but the principles used in designing the WDW network can be applied and scaled up.
Retrofitting public transit on an urban area designed for personal motor vehicle transportation (like most US cities) does indeed make it exceedingly difficult to build a public transit network that provides convenient access between arbitrary locations within the coverage area. WDW planned and built in parallel with its public transit network, so it works exceedingly well to get to or from hub locations. It actually works quite poorly if you want to do something like travel between an arbitrary pair of hotels, since it wasn’t really design to support that use case. Cities that grew up alongside their public transit networks generally work quite well for getting between arbitrary locations. New York City is the best example in the US, but cities like Tokyo, London, and Paris have public transit systems they work quite well. Jerrett Walker, author of Human Transit, advocates that cities should plan their development and their public transit in coordinated fashion, so they going forward, the public transit systems CAN provide good service.
Well maybe in 3rd world countries it's all waay more difficult. I live in Indonesia, and the cities are hostile both to public and private transport alike - existing infrastructure are often not enough, and to create new dedicated RoW, usually a few things will have to be sacrificed, be it for a new transit or a new highway alike, even when trying as hard as possible to follow existing lines or roads. At least be grateful that you have well-planned and well-regulated cities in the US. The rest goes to whether the populace wants to live (properly) in a city or not - cities in the US are equal to rural areas here by population density.
Mochamad Fachri, yeah, in lot of developing countries, urban land use development and transportation network development can often be less well planned and regulated, resulting in urban areas that can be quite difficult to get around in. 😞
What about capacity’s impact? Some hotels constantly have nearly empty busses throughout the day while others (looking at you Coronado Springs after the new tower opened) are frequently full. That extends the 20 minute headway that you mention. I’ve seen people watch three busses come and go because they were full. I’ve also spent way too much money on Minnie Vans to avoid this problem.
So what about the skyliner? Looks like the availability is nearly continuous. There are some intermediate stops, but the longest ride is only 11 minutes. The shortest route takes only 3 minutes, surely a good use of your time. I would add some additional criteria: Is the transit system a good use of space? I would argue that at-grade tram systems are not because they use up so much valuable urban lane space for their tracks. Dedicated bus lanes and HOV lanes usually are not as well. Subways and underground trains are great because it frees up the surface for more valuable uses. Does the transit system detract from the aesthetics of the region, or add to it? Electric trams and electric trains fall down here because of their messy overhead power lines. Battery operated electric buses don't suffer from this problem. Dedicated HOV lanes may add extra complexity to already sprawling stacked interchanges, adding to the visual mess. Diesel buses visibly add to the air pollution of a city so they fall down here. Natural gas and electric vehicles are preferable. Is the transit system environmentally friendly and sustainable? Again, diesel-operated vehicles leave a great deal to be desired. Natural gas vehicles can be switched to biogas when underground sources dry up, so I consider this reasonably sustainable. Does the transit system add to a city's noise pollution, or alleviate it? Electric vehicles are usually quieter than other forms of propulsion. Does the system (both vehicles and stations) look modern and attractive, or at least charming, cute and well-loved versus antiquated and outdated? Is this a system I would be proud to ride on, or would I feel that it's a poor substitute for the style I'd really like to travel in? Are the waiting areas and car accommodations comfortable? Are there any on-board services available? Restrooms? Snack, meal or drink service? Are there any services available in the stations or waiting areas? Restrooms? Snack, meal or drink service? Incidentals such as news stands? Is there seating protected from inclement weather? Are there conveniently placed garbage cans (that are not overflowing)? How much last mile walking is required at each end? How many transfers are required to get to where I want to go? How many tickets must be purchased? I would also restate a few of the criteria: Instead of "it's a good use of my time" I'd like the more specific "is this public transit system the fastest way to get to where I want to go? If not, does it offer a compelling tradeoff that allows me to justify the extra time?" Instead of "it's a good use of my money" I'd like the more specific "is this public transit system the cheapest way to get to where I want to go? If not, does it offer a compelling tradeoff that allows me to justify the extra expense?" There's another dimension to cost as well, since most public transit systems are subsidized: "is this public transit system the best use of tax money, or could a competing technology accomplish our goals more cheaply or do a better job for the same money?"
I was a bit worried that demand for the Skyliner might overwhelm the system's capacity and lead to long lines. But it sounds as if things have settled down such that that's not a huge problem. The accident that occurred shortly after opening might have scared some people away! There's a lot of public anxiety about getting stranded on the system in a breakdown (in typically hot weather, without toilet facilities on board). Also some fear of heights. I have not been back to WDW since they opened it, but I just rode the Sentosa Island gondolas in Singapore which use basically the same system. They seem to work pretty well--but a big difference is that the Sentosa gondolas are quite expensive to ride, an up-charge tourist attraction in themselves rather than a "free" transit system, which dials the passenger volume way down. There's a cheap monorail that goes there too and that gets crammed with people.
At-grade tram systems are a great use of space. Trams can seat way more people per unit of area than cars can and where they are not frequent enough to justify their own space the tracks they simply share the road with cars so they barely use any space at all. Requiring an on-board snack, meal or drink service during your commute might mean you live too far from your job. For daily transit a no-frills experience is sufficient and even desirable for most people. Your requirements for waiting areas all fit into the passenger experience, as a transit experience that respects its customers invests in passenger experience, this falls under criterion 5 from the video. Walking distance at each end falls under criterion 1. Regarding the restated criteria: First of all the trade-off part of the questions should be dropped in my opinion. The 7 criteria take this into account. Scoring worse in one criterion can be justified by scoring better in another. I personally think being a good use of time is more complete. A good transit system uses the majority of your time to move you closer to your destination rather than leaving you sitting around waiting and allows you to use the time to do other things you might want to do, which covers pretty much everything in the restated criterion. Regarding cost: Walking is always cheapest, so taking public transit always has to be justified through other trade-offs, which again are the other criteria. Something is only ever a good use of your money if it gives you benefits as valuable or more valuable than the money you put in. Regarding the tax: This is only dependent on the other criteria, a government funded investment into public transit is automatically justified if it maintains a good system or if it makes a system better, both of which are defined by the other criteria. Additionally the list appears to be to decide for yourself if taking the public transit is a good idea, which is a personal decision. Where your tax money goes, is not.
I'd barely consider 10 minute intervals frequent service. Most modes of transport I take usually have 5 minutes intervals or less. Having to wait outside in the rain/snow for anything more than 5 minutes tends to suck pretty hard
The Walt Disney Company used to have a mass-transit division that was fabricating monorail and WEDway PeopleMover systems for third-parties, such as the international airport in Houston, and, of course, Walt Disney World, and EPCoT, specifically, were conceived to be a city with a mix of land uses beyond those serving guests. The premliminary planning for EPCoT relentlessly subjugated the role of the automobile.
One of my favorite parts of Disney world are the transport options like the ferries, smaller boats and monorails idk y, the parks here in Tokyo feel dull cause they don’t have all of that
What is going on with Dayton? Yesterday, @WendoverProductions has a clip of the Dayton Dragons in their video about American Sports in China, and now City Beautiful features the Greater Dayton RTA in their Disney Transport video.
Hey City Beautiful I'm from Tehuacán who have the highest use of public transit in Mexico, around 79%, not counting ciclyst or pederestians, so the real "no particular car users" number would be around 90%. The transportation it is not the best but you have the freedom to go anywhere anytime and that is awesome.
WDWs transportation is not made to be a public transportation system, its made to get people from the hotels to the parks and back which is where it falls apart as a real public transit. People that go to Disney World are mostly upper middle class and don't understand public transportation, and a lot of those people are fat and get mad when they have to walk (its true i'm not apologizing for stating a fact), so instead of being more efficient with more frequent transfers Disney focuses more on direct service with longer routes and wait times. The monorail and skyliner are obviously a lot faster so they can run more in a way that makes sense than the buses, but Disney's clientele view the buses as shuttles not as public transit. Also in regards to reliability, Disney is constantly changing their headways and staffing levels based on attendance projections, and they do change their service levels based on quarterly profits etc. So if the park in Paris or Shanghai loses money its likely that WDWs bus service will get some cuts.
frequency is very bad in my city, it is often like 30 minutes between buses. Once when i was going home from school very late so there was a even bigger gap between buses. I had to take line 24 and then switch to line 23, but bus number 24 was to minutes late to the bus stop, and 23 was already gone so i had to wait for an hour and 7 minutes and i didn't have money for a taxi.
A) Not everyone visiting the Magic Kingdom parks in their lot; those in Disney Hotels go straight to the main gate so your base numbers are off. B) You cannot travel from resort to resort via bus without transferring, nor can you travel from the parks to Downtown Disney without transferring, so lots of transfers are needed. C) Their resorts are horribly overpriced which makes their "free" resort transit less free.
A) True, although resort guests can park in the lots if the want for free (at least they used to be). B) Mostly true, although if you want to go to another resort on the same bus route that goes from your resort to the theme park you can use that bus. C) I guess define horribly overpriced. A typical room in a deluxe resort is $300-$400 a night. You can easily pay that on a summer weekend in a generic beach hotel in the Northeast in the summer.
1. You didn't consider that DisneyTransport changes it's frequency based on crowd demands. At the end of the night, monorails and buses run much more frequently than throughout the day to cope with large crowds leaving at once. In a typical night, there will be busses lined up for larger resorts, and combination resorts such as the all-stars. 2. Disney world is the most magical place on Earth, Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth. This video does not discuss Disneyland.
Well, the 20minute critique is interesting because that only applies in the middle of the day, because Disney busses in the morning and evening are basically constant with no wait at all, other than the time to load.
To be fair, it’s more of an entertainment complex than a theme park. Walt Disney World actually encompasses four separate theme parks, with many kilometers between them, along with golf courses, mini golf, lakes, campgrounds, water parks, and so on. It’s huge, yes, but not just a single theme park. :)
Ouch. And his often do the even run? It looks like an S bahn style system in paper based on route and distance between stops and what not but if they don't have frequency at, at the very least every 20 minutes, then that's a death sentence for them!
The weekday schedule is confusing, and you are fucked if the station near you isn't a big stop. The weekend schedule is hourly and it takes twice as long to take the train as it is to drive. So what's the point? I don't know. Public transit is a joke. It's hard to drive in SF but the second you are South of Daly City Bart it's an extreme polar opposite.... Because they are different counties WHO GIVES A FUCK.
On paper, Caltrain has a fantastic route: it runs from downtown San Jose to just short of downtown San Francisco, passing through the relatively dense downtowns of a string of cities that make up Silicon Valley. But the system is saddled with some serious issues. Its funding and management is shared across three counties, which effectively means it is perpetually starved for funding. It shares tracks with freight trains, which puts limits on the schedule, speed, and the equipment that can be used. And it is not grade separated, which also limits train frequency to avoid massive traffic jams on the streets that cross the rails. A system that could be an amazing mass transit artery of Silicon Valley is instead a modestly utilized service mostly for getting to and from work and baseball games. Forget about using for a night out in the big city or a weekend getaway.
I only skimmed, but my one main issue with Disney Transit wasn't really discussed that I saw: mornings and evenings. If you get on one of their buses in the middle of the day, it is comfortable, convenient, and even if you do have to wait twenty minutes for it, not too bad at all. But that is because few people are riding at this time. In the mornings, on the way to the parks, the buses are as packed as a Tokyo subway. It is standing room only, often some of the riders cannot even grab a handhold, and every start and stop along the road is another opportunity to be thrown into your fellow riders. This is the reality for morning trips, because just about every hotel guest is on a bus between 8 and 10 AM. Throw in the havoc that can be caused by a wheelchair or scooter and you have the makings of disaster. Someday, if it hasn't happened already, one of those buses is going to roll or slam and many people will be killed or injured. This is the nature of a one-way transit system. Hotels to parks in a very narrow window. Evenings are a little better, because people leave the parks over a wider window, but it is only a little better. I believe the Skyliner is Disney's attempt to correct some of this and, if they can manage to run this first system without causing mass heatstroke during a summer afternoon breakdown, they will probably extend it to the rest of the moderate and value resorts over a short time, because of the number of buses it can replace and the relative safety of the trip. They may end up only running the Skyliner during morning and evening rush - just my suspicion - and serve those hotels by buses during the rest of the day, to avoid those heat issues. Or perhaps they will retrofit the Skyliner cabs with solar-powered AC in the roofs - the brighter the sun, the more threat there is, but more power for the AC. Or maybe they will hire Elon Musk to dig tunnels for them and they can run a PeopleMover system throughout the resort. Yeah, probably not, but that would be my pipe-dream.
Love the People Mover. Part of the issue can be time of year. If you go visit at an off time of the year (mid May, early November, etc.) the transit crowds can be minimal yet there's still enough service.
MTA gang for the win! sometimes it takes 5min less than expected to get to work. Other days it takes 30min longer because someone decided to dump their garbage on the tracks.
Environmental friendliness is mostly external to how useful the service is. From the user's perspective, it indirectly falls under the "respect" criterion. Breathing in exhaust fumes or tunnel dust while waiting can get nasty, and electric vehicles typically provide a smoother ride than ICE ones. The carbon footprint is most likely lower than the alternatives regardless.
@@arnulfoaldaco750 It does depend, actually. Running diesel buses with low ridership can get close to private cars per passenger-km. But such services are also expensive to operate, so they tend not to last long. Electricity obviously depends on the source, although the efficiency is so much higher than combustion engines that even 100% coal would generally be better.
@@hezec Electric motors are extremely efficient in city driving conditions because they can develop tremendous torque to accelerate from a stop when compared with internal combustion engines. And accelerating from a stop is perhaps the most frequent demanding function a bus engine or motor performs.
I think one thing that isn't really important to Disney but should be higher priority for big systems is ease of planning. I recently had to commute with public transport for a few weeks and while the public transport system itself was quite good planning my daily trips was a bit of a nightmare. I needed to transfer multiple times and with about 10 possible routes that could each be optimal at different times. Using a map for scenario is not really possible, common apps didn't fully support the transport system and their own alternative was an absolute nightmare. I spend so much time planning my commute and changing it on the fly because some bus was early or late.
You kept saying it's an unfair comparison because they got to build the stations to service only planned locations. Yet a train station is likely to be in the same place for 100 years or more. The places people live and work change faster than that. Their has to be a reasonable case for building a well set up transport system and letting everything else work its self out around it.
I remember when I was in the Disney College Program the guest buses were way more reliable than the ones destined for cast members. I heard a lot changed in the past three to four years but I remember sometimes missing my bus and having to wait over an hour in the summer heat to catch a bus with no ac that broke down on the road multiple times.
True, definitely an area they could improve but I can see where that would be a low priority. Best bet if not just driving your car between the resorts is to go to a theme park and switch buses there to one for the other resort, or if after theme park hours taking the bus to Disney Springs (old Downtown Disney).
Have you ever taken a bus from one of the parks or Springs to a value resort (Pop Century, AoA or All Star) and noticed it’s always toward the very end of the station? That’s by design. The more you paid for a resort, the closer your bus is to the park.
Routes and headway are key. On weekdays, The 4 routes a block from my home run every 10-15 minutes, 3 run to downtown (work) and all to the light rail. I hardly need a schedule, but I use one to figure out which route I will take.that will get me to my destination fastest. [I gave up my car after realizing I hardly need it any more.] For a few months, I needed to go to medical appointments in the suburbs. I thought I was lucky because a bus ran directly from my office to a stop in front of the clinic. I took it - once. 30 minute headways don't make a convenient trip for a 1 hour appointment. [I switched to ride hail ... I don't take the bus for financial reasons, but for convenience.]
Here are some facts: Disney transport is good because of the theme park. They don’t need to be fast, as if you are there, you are most likely on vacation. They go everywhere, because they are built for each area to access it. If the transit was a separate company, it would earn a lot less money, because the park pays the transport. In the end, Disney is a great transit company as long as they are part of Disney.
Where I went to university had the largest free bus system in the free world, paid mostly by student fees. It made boarding super fast, and thus the routes noticably faster. Surely "legibility" is a matter of Google Maps now? When I lived in Oslo a couple of months a decade and a half ago, it had an app/website for entering your origin and destination street address, and desired travel time, and getting a full set of options, including walking to, from and between transit stops. I loved it.
A lot of people don't know just how sophisticated transportation systems run by the Federal Lands division of FHWA can become. They're essentially the DOT for the federally-owned/administered land: tribes, federal land management agencies (of which the National Parks is one) and military bases. This includes transit at the largest and most visited national parks and monuments.
I think you should really visit Prague. The current state of city planning isn't the greatest, but our public transport system is one of the greatest in the world
I think that this topic is useful in seeing the interaction between land use and planning. This system undoubtedly works well in part because the people and the places that they want to be are very clustered. Buses can be offered from each resort to each park because the density of resorts makes passenger volume at each node high. Since there are fewer total nodes than in a sprawling city, frequency can be increased.
I worked at Disney World. At peak times such as closing they run buses more then every 20 min. They need to clear out parks asap to start deep cleaning and maintenance at night. The monorail between Epcot and Magic Kingdom Parking is every 5 min or less. I worked under a station and heard the arrival constantly lol.
Given how integrated it is with the App and the wristbands and whatnot now at Disney, they should be able to let each user "call" a bus to their location at a certain time - then they could use that information to influence their bus routes/number of buses. They probably have something behind the scenes they already do like a dispatcher who looks at live video from the bus stops to see how many are waiting and makes adjustments accordingly.
There have been more then that one incidents on the monorail system then the shoe falling off. It’s become one of the least reliable system Disney has.
Hey, I came here because of Planning Ancient Rome, which was amazing, but there was one thing I wasn't entirely clear on: is that going to be a series of some sorts or was it a one-off?
You mentioned the trade off of free service vs better service, which got me thinking about why doesn’t Disney offer VIP shuttle options, say $100/day for up to 6 people for a pass to ride a limo immediately rather than waiting for a bus or monorail. Since Disney is all about the Benjamins I don’t think they *don’t* offer such a service because it would promote a feeling of elitism and further the visibility of the class divide, so I wonder why they don’t. Perhaps rich people don’t go to Disney in the first place? I think this is a great thought exercise to help reflect on the bigger issues of mass transit in the USA, why its widely perceived as being a service “for the poor” in most suburban areas.
John Early technically they do have a private shuttle option called the Minnie Van which is a partnership with Lyft. Based on the article I read from 2018, there was a minimum of $15 ride with most rides being between $25-40
They also tested an express bus option in early 2017 that cost $19/person for a single day or $29/person for multiple days. The bus would pick up inside the park and go directly to another park and drop the passengers off inside the security area. This allowed the passengers to skip the security screening at the entrance to the park, since they already went through it at the first park. After 8 months, this service ended due to low demand.
@@JakeLunceford My suspicion with that is that most people don't want to park hop. I've done it a few times but generally it's easier to just focus on time in one park. The only exception was going to Epcot to dine at the many restaurants in the World Showcase later in the day.
They say that buses run every 20 minutes, but that’s not really true. There were times when I waited over 30 minutes for a bus. That can be very frustrating if you need to be somewhere at a certain time. There are really no good alternatives at many locations around Disney property, and there are no bus schedules to consult. You just have to wait out in the Florida humidity for an unknown period of time until your bus shows up. Also, the buses go to all the major destinations without transferring. But if you need to make an unusual trip (like Typhoon Lagoon to Animal Kingdom) there’s no sensible way to do it, and your trip can take like three hours, when it could be a 20 minute drive.
For the majority of guests it just isn't practical to try to go to multiple parks, etc. in the same day even if you have some sort of park hopper pass.
@@jimzecca3961, I completely agree. In my opinion, it's best to spend an entire day at one park. That will allow you to experience most of the attractions that are on offer. If you try to shuttle between different parks, you'll waste a lot of time in transit.
One thing to add relative to the efficiency of Disney transport - there's no pay as you go. It's all included in the cost of your resort and theme park tickets. Not having to deal with selling passes (and people being confused about the price, passes, etc. who aren't locals) makes it easier. Also, you have a group mindset among your passengers - I'm here on vacation and I'm going to a theme park.
The 20 minute interval is a mid day thing. In the peak hours (mornings as the park opens, evenings as people go back to hotels,) they lower it to 10 or so. I've also seen when that when a very large line formed that they could call for an extra bus to deal with the overflow.
The 20 Minute Headway for the buses is mainly for Deluxe Resorts like the Contemporary and Wilderness Lodge; Most Value and Moderate resorts have bus headway to the parks 10 minutes or better. When i have been the last few times; i opted to stay at Pop Century becuase the buses are very frequent especially to the Magic Kingdom and use the 60 ft buses.
these resorts are main money making outlets for the companies who earlier made it Disney being the first ones and others followed, if taken good care of, maintained, you can make out from their financial sheets that these are their main money making projects
As someone who's attended Disney quite a bit, the bus is definitely getting less and less reliable. I've been stranded for over an hour on multiple occasions. The alternate forms of transportation are great tho. Especially the SkyLiner.
This is so true! I moved to Tokyo a few months ago, and I’ve traveled a lot throughout Honshu, and it has been very easy to get around, even in very rural areas, just using public transit. It is so freeing!
It's only difficult to provide transit service to every single person in a metro area if parts of the metro area are either of too low a population density to support transit service, and/or barriers make routes that include certain areas difficult to plan an efficient route around (i.e. an area cut off by a freeway).
Besides, most people at Disney world who flew there usually get a rental car at the airport, plus, with a rental car, you can stay at hotels that don't have direct access to Disney transit
As someone who goes to Disney annually, I can say while yes, the transportation systems are reliable, id still leave yourself extra time if you are headed for a reservation or something. Disney tries to be as consistent as they can, but that isn’t always the case
One summer we were in the contemporary hotel. From there to Epcot was about an hour and 15 minutes. The buses, and rails were past capacity constantly. Havent been back, it was 5 years ago.
Was that right when the park opened for the day? We were in Disney 5 years ago at the Yacht Club and I don't recall any long waits for buses, etc. We went in August.
At 1:10, the street grid in the background of the "Hard Math" arrow is the street grid in Vancouver BC! 16th Ave and Granvillle St right in the middle.
It’s crazy how Disney can have pretty decent transit yet also require some of the largest surface parking lots I’ve ever seen. I mean seriously… does the magic kingdom need 12 THOUSAND parking spaces?
"20 minute headway on buses is kinda disappointing"
So my city's buses that come every hour really are as crappy as I thought
There really is a magical difference that happens when transit headways drop below 10 minutes. You essentially never have to consult a schedule, because you know a bus or train will be along shortly, and transfers are relatively painless, because schedule coordination isn’t an issue.
When headways become long (and one hour headways are VERY BAD), then advance trip planning becomes a major factor in riding transit, and scheduling transfers becomes tricky, both for the transit agency and its riders.
I thought the same thing. 1 hour for nearly every stop/line in my city
yeah my city’s buses come every 40 minutes to an hour meaning you really have to plan and if you’re taking the bus somewhere you have to plan to stay there for a while because no quick trips are possible due to the shitty frequency
Scott Atwood in London 5 minutes is bad on the tube and on lines they come every 90 seconds but down here (just 1hour away from London) trains come every hour
Tobey Transport , 5 minute headways really isn’t bad at all on any transit system, as that means the average wait time for riders is only 2.5 minutes. A 90 second headway is superb, and achieving anything higher than that would be exceedingly difficult because dwell time to load and unload passengers become a major factor with shorter dwell times.
The 20 minutes interval for the busses is not as it seems. Disney runs busses at least every 20 min but more frequently at expected peak times and also dynamically when there are many people waiting. It also uses a dynamic system where busses only get their next route just prior to reaching the last destination. This allows disney to dynamically send busses to stations with the most passengers waiting. That would be an interesting topic for a video.
I was going to say pretty much the same thing. I also don't think the monorail frequency is accurate either. Usually the monorail tends to be around 3-4 minute frequencies on the resort line, 4-5 on the express, and closer to 10 on the EPCOT line.
Still, for planning purposes you would have to assume the 20 minutes if you e.g. wanted to be sure you arrive on time.
so, public transport segegation? no thanks
@@tortellinifettuccine don't you mean "segregation"?
@@Sewblon yes, I blame my shit phone, my actual phone broke so I'm using a 2006 fossil
Does accessibility fits into one of those categories ? Maybe "It respects me" ? It's a real issue since many transit systems arent totally (or even partially ) accessible. Sometimes disabled people can use them but it still takes unnecessary effort because their needs are largely ignored.
Yes, good point! Accessibility is a respect issue for sure.
I'd say it counts. I'm pleased to say accessibility is something increasingly being paid the attention it deserves. There's a long way to go, especially refurbishing older transit systems, but it looks like steady improvement ahead.
Walt Disney World does better that many transit systems, particularly in its newer transit modes. All of its transit vehicles accommodate users with mobility needs, and the new ropeway system even splits the loading area, so that those who need extra time and assistance, or can’t board a slowly moving gondola car can board without slowing or stopping the main queue of vehicles.
Fairly sure it gets into that. Here while accessibility isn't very well, there are loads of staff members around to help you, so it's not that much of a problem once they're notified.
"It respects me" is the single worst aspect of American transit in general--the reluctance of authorities and the members of the general public less reliant on transit (usually richer, of advantaged races and conservative-minded) often have visceral issues with spending more public resources to ensure that the people most reliant on transit (poor, racial minorities) get a transportation system that allows them to lead a dignified life.
3:30 "Place where the boats dock"
So.... a dock?
I was going to say "harbor"
Port
Marina
Pontoon.
Ferry terminal?
I used to work with the bus system at WDW. One of the biggest issues we had to deal with were the riders. Most people who visit WDW are somewhat wealthy and often do not use or have never used public transportation. This would result in riders being very upset if the bus was a few minutes late or if the bus had too many fellow riders. I do want to point out that although the routes are mostly direct from hotel to park. Many buses go to multiple hotels on the same line or have multiple stops at larger hotels which can add delays. Great video I have been watching you over the past few years and enjoy all of your content continue the great work!
Geoffrey Sierzant I don’t think wealth is that big a factor in predicting if people have used public transportation before their travel to WDW; I suspect availability of public transportation in the guests’ hometown is a much bigger factor.
@@jpe1 Good point money isn't the best predictor. I guess my point is most riders of a transportation system in daliy life are much more lenient or less bothered by small issues. Than those who rarely use or have never used mass transit. I truly think Disney runs a good system.
Yeah, I suspect that given how bad public transit is in most of the US, and how little it is utilized, a vacation at Walt Disney World may be many Americans first real experience with using public transit. For those familiar with using public transit, WDW transit feels pretty normal, but if you have only ever gotten around by personal vehicle, the transit to public transit might be a bit jarring.
John Early that may be true in Europe or a few cities like New York, but in the US wealthy people don’t really use public transport often if at all.
@@stoutyyyy And middle-class US suburbanites too. I tend to use public transit in every city I visit, and my daily commute these days is on a motor coach, but I know people who are baffled that I don't just call an Uber for all purposes. Many people who never use subways or buses find them scary to ride.
"You're not gonna ride transit if it gets you to work on time one day, but not the next"
*cries in DC Metro*
When a theme park has a better public transit than big cities..
well to be fair they don't really have the problem of city politics. if they want to have a bus driving there it will happen. there won't be any one complaining about the noise from that bus.
or because they want to build a new bus stop there won't be a other business owning the extra space.
sirBrouwer yup! Disney has great public transit for the same reason that countries with authoritarian governments like China have great public transit, no member of the public is allowed to complain about it or suggest a different way of doing it.
The only way Walt Disney was able to implement his vision of “utopia” was to create his own municipality and run it as a total dictatorship, not really a viable choice anywhere else in the USA.
It’s entirely possible to have great public transit without an authoritarian government. It just doesn’t seem to happen much in the US. I have lived without a car in both Berlin and Tokyo, and it is incredibly easy to get around both cities, quickly and conveniently on transit. In fact, in Tokyo, much of the transit is actually run profitably by private companies!
@@ScottAtwood The key is your last sentence "Private Companies" .. the government, at least in the US, is more concerned with looking busy and lining pockets than being effective, so we don't get nice things. Business 100% about effectiveness because it maximizes profit and are better at management.
gi70st, I was just giving that as an example that great public transit doesn’t necessarily require an authoritarian government. It also doesn’t require a profit-driven private company either. New York City has some of the best public transit in the US, and it is run by a government agency.
I come from Singapore and before I watched this video, I never realised how stupid it sounded when I say I get mad at the transport system. I get mad when the buses come at 13 minutes frequency and the trains are slightly delayed. During peak hours, our buses come every 5-7 minutes (or 2-3 minutes for those with high ridership) and trains come every 2 minutes. That's incredible. I'm never taking my transit for granted again. I just wished you'd critique our transit but that's far from the States!
I’m almost positive Disney made sure it’s transporting system gets you to all the places you need or want to go so you can spend more money lol
That might be the good side of a controlled design city, transport is highly important because they want people to come back.
I think this comment actually hits on an important reality with transit. Not only is good transit good for people, but it tends to benefit towns and cities too. The more people you can move and get to where they want to go, generally speaking, the better off local businesses are, and the stronger the local economy can be! Good transit has far more capacity than roads ever will, and Disney figured that one out a while ago 🎉
The monorail put them on the map like North Haverbrook and Ogdenville
Are you just a geography nerd that comments on all the map boi channels and geography channels? I see you everywhere.
Your transport is amazing, dear leader
I read North saw Kim, and was confused.
Orangepuffs ; I suspect multiple people masquerade as the dear leader so you might be seeing comments from different people.
@@jpe1 Same picture though so that's why it's freaky.
Disney’s transportation system is so good, when the fireworks show was over and suddenly everyone had to leave the park, the calm efficiency of thousands upon thousands of people being transported out left just as much of an impression on me as the fireworks themselves. I vividly remember looking out and seeing the huge crowds and all the modes working together with no sign of chaos.
So everyone should build theme parks in Cities Skylines.
As a subscriber to Biffa's traffic fix series I can only shake my head at some of the transit lines (especially bus lines with _too many buses_ !) making traffic worse rather than better.
I still play old school Roller Coaster Tycoon 2.
@@CityBeautiful Classic!
City Beautiful Planet Coaster is amazing
I always wished that NYC would adopt the Disney monorail.
The Walt Disney Company used to have a mass-transit division for building monorail and WEDway PeopleMover systems.
The division created, for example, a PeopleMover system for Houston's international airport.
10 minute frequency would obviously be the ideal but I'd argue anything more then 30 minutes is unacceptable especially on a system that requires frequent transfers
I've had an hour (or more when late) between services before. It is horrible.
Hey, I live in a country where you should consider yourself lucky if you get a 30 minute interval.
Many services even in fairly large cities are hourly or less, and some get to 90 or 120 minute intervals or longer.
They also tend to stop pretty far away from where you'd want to go.
Add to that the tendency for the services to operate during a fairly narrow range of hours and yeah... Most people drive...
The extremely long distances and slow speeds don't help either.
When it takes a bus 90 minutes to get to it's destination and a train 2 hours to get from the edge of the network to the centre...
Yeah, it all adds up to some serious frustration.
Nothing like long distance travel of course.
Here it's not 'lucky if it's every 30 minutes), or 'lucky if it's every hour'
No, it's lucky if there's more than one service a day...
And for many routes it even manages to be lucky if it's more than one service a week.
I missed a long distance train once. Was stuck there until the following day...
And that's a fairly high frequency route as it goes (technically 3 services a day each direction, but they're often booked out for good measure.)
Yeah, bad public transport sucks...
@@KuraIthys that's worse! I would not even call that a commuter network. Statistically more people drive than take public transport in Sydney, but without it our city wouldn't function as the roads can't really handle what we have now.
@@Yelrebmikkim that's really the case with most public transportation networks at least in the western world, a low precentage actually use it but without it that extra 5 or 10% on the road would absolutely destroy the road network
My area tends to be every hour or so during the day & none at night past about 8pm💀
I wish the city of Orlando invested in monorail system, this traffic is getting bad
Good idea, but monorails tend to be more expensive than light rail or subways, particularly because they “have” to be in the air.
They just have to build a flexible system that can quickly transport people around the city without driving.
My pick: light rail.
@@mmwpro63 Orlando does have SunRail...
fade2blac352 I mean yeah it’s nice that we have at least something but it’s so limited. And Orlando sprawls like crazy.
Jahel Medero It's better than what Tampa has (nothing).
Monorails are cool, but often not a great choice for public transit. Track switches are common need for fixed route systems, and switching equipment for monorails is particularly complex and expensive.
One problem with WDW's bus system is that sometimes, you actually do want to go from one hotel to another--for instance, some of the best restaurants on property are at the hotels (such as the ones at Animal Kingdom Lodge), and you might want to visit one where you're not staying. Traveling between hotels is a laborious process because you typically have to ride to a theme park or to Disney Springs, then change buses. Many such trips do require a good hour to complete, and you have to factor that in when planning dinner reservations.
I was really impressed by the water-taxi system at Universal Orlando when I was staying on property there. It's a smaller area than Disney World, so they can run little boats really frequently and get you to the parks in just a few minutes--it had that frictionless feeling of freedom that I didn't really get in Disney's system.
I totally agree with what you say about hotel-to-hotel. Sometimes the best bet is to just drive your car if you have one on property. I haven't stayed at any of the Universal hotels before but that boat system sounds good and I'm sure it's probably pretty easy to get to City Walk.
I operated the Monorail trains at WDW about 7 years ago. Yes, those poor things are so old, and breakdowns were becoming common by the time I left. We always strived to make guests feel safe and welcome even with our delays and shutdowns, but people tend to get testy when on vacation. Monorail Blue is the oldest one! We would only operate at most 9 trains at a time, as the other 3 were rotated for parts--many times they'd have to be cannibalized for repairs because the company that used to make them no longer exists.
I have a friend who currently does monorails and can definitely attest to their increasingly poor reliability.
Oof, rip monorails...youd she with all Disney's Bing money they need to be able to get people to figure out how the parts were made and just make them themselves, unfortunately the reason they have so much money is because they don't care about preserving stuff like ol bessy...
I experienced multiple monorail breakdowns on my visit in 2018. The worst one being after the fireworks one night when it completely failed. The boats couldn't cope so they had poor young employees with megaphones telling people to walk to bay number X at the bus station and buses were operating to take people back to TTC. The reality is that there were no buses operating and many hundreds of unhappy people were queued like cattle.
@@TS_Mind_Swept, don't forget, maintenance doesn't generate revenue. Because CORPORATE GREED has become Disney's top priority, they will never do more than the bare minimum for anything that doesn't generate a quick profit. This was never Walt Disney's approach to anything. It all began when Michael Eisner showed-up.
What are you talking about? The current Mark VI fleet was manufactured by Bombardier. That company very much still exists and is rumored to be contracted to build the new fleet.
Bus: Every 20 mins
Boat: Every 15/30 mins
Monorail: Every 10 mins
Skyliner: Every 11 seconds
Actually less time. I used to work there.
Maybe every city should have a gondola/skyliner.
Why is it that skyliners/ski lift style transportation is almost exclusively used in themeparks/resorts.
I understand i am not well traveled and they are point to point but it seems like there should be some use case in urban areas. (Possibly from a train hub to the middle of a shopping district, but it could also just a price factor)
@@jasonreed7522 Rio de Janeiro used them to access favelas that were too densely built for buses or trains, without tearing down a lot of homes.
I recall discussions of their feasibility for London when I lived in the UK, but I don't know how seriously. There were a lot of fanciful proposals put out there in a certain period.
Under respects it's riders, I would add the subcriteria of "communicates outages, closures, etc." I would argue it's separate from "reliable" because it's not so much about how often there's an outage or delay, but whether the agency respects the riders enough to thoroughly communicate these events, both planned and unplanned.
For the record, WMATA in DC would actually do pretty well in this category, despite the numerous and far too frequent closures, outages, and delays. They do a fairly good job of communicating those events (maybe because they have so much practice at it).
Fully agree about reliability - the complete lack of any contingency plan for the regular monorail breakdowns is pathetic.
You don't need to go very far to find another operator with poor reliability and absolutely zero interest in advising passengers of buses running very late: GoLynx in Orlando is hopeless.
@@kc3302 I wouldn't think that would be a huge issue for most Disney guests. Every hotel basically has buses to every park. Some resorts are close enough to walk or have other modes like boats. The monorail goes very few places in Disney World. I've always hoped they'd add a few more lines to make it easier to jump between resorts.
Please stand clear of the doors! ¡Por favor manténgase alejado de las puertas!
Hey! I have that tee shirt!
It sounds so much better in Spanish
I 16 yrs after I left can still say that lol. Every 3 min the monoraill said that.
Everyone: Frequency is freedom
Mumbai monorail: Seventh largest monorail line in the world, only 5 monorail trains.
To be fair, monorail lines tend to be quite small and scarce when used for city transit. Its rupture with the "norm" of "fixed guideway systems" are supposed to be conventional two rails makes them be perceived as impractically niche, and usually only get used at unconventional settings, such as airport's internal transit, theme parks or select parts of major cities built with special events in mind.
metros are more common
"Some people go to EPCOT, I guess"... EPCOT ranks as one of the top 10 theme parks in the world for attendance... so yes, some do.
Epcot is the only one where you can drink
@@stoutyyyy Not true you can drink at all of them, although Magic Kingdom you need to be a table service restaurant. Fun fact: Walt was 100% against selling alcohol in the parks and would get real mad at people that constantly suggested it, but recently the desire for the $ ultimately won out and its available at all the parks now lol.
@@TheLocalLt No that is not true at all. All the historians who have studied Walt have said that's not true, even the Jews who worked for him said that's not true.
Jeff P you right
@@jeffc1347 I could be wrong but I thought Be Our Guest was the only MK restaurant that served alcohol - although they may have expanded it now.
Public transport in US looks so obsolete after visiting Shanghai or Moscow for example!
7:46 is Cologne!
Tell that to everyone who lives juuuust outside of Moscow, since they can't afford to live inside it, but also can't afford to have their windshield wipers/mirrors/freaking *wheels* stolen. Why do you think those "park here and enter metro" things are unpopular? This is Russia, any car far away from a vigilant owner is vulnerable.
And so it is the struggle, the struggle of standing in gridlock wasting time, gasoline or propane. And that's if you have a driving license. If you don't - you stand in gridlock in a bus, at 6 AM because you have to wake up at 5 to get to work on time.
I hope the pandemic changes the landscape of work, and at least half the people who can work remotely will work remotely. That's up to a quarter of the workforce (since about half can work remotely, but people are stubborn and stupid). Cities like Moscow will sigh a temporary relief... because once it's clear the roads are more well functioning again - we're back to square one, but this time with the people who left being replaced with some amount of people who had a car, but previously used public transport because they could and it's faster than traffic jams.
Cars are a solution that became a problem. What we need is... basically that uber that lets you share it with other passengers (it's unavailable in Russia, BTW), but be mandatory for all drivers (for example for any car entering the city centre), and at the bare cost of gasoline+oil. Or maybe that driverless taxi Tesla is making. If you kill the profession of a taxi driver by offering rides at the cost cheaper than carsharing app (because electric+driverless, so less accidents and therefore lower insurance), and even better if you could share these rides, again, like in that uber type that's unavailable in Russia.
That would seriously challenge the cost and effectiveness of car ownership and driving in the city.
The trams in Melbourne's CBD are an absolute godsend for visitors. They are free so you don't need a transit card, run on every street in both directions, and are so frequent the entire street will be practically filled on streets with multiple lines. The result is, if you think, "hey, I want to go that way", you walk up to the stop, get on, and get off a few minutes later. You don't need google maps, line maps or transport officers to explain, it's absolutely fantastic.
The only one of the seven points it falls short of is reliability during peak, but like I said there are so many (frequency is so high) and distance is relatively short (within the CBD I'm talking) so it literally doesn't matter.
"You're not gonna ride transit if it get's you to work on time one day but doesn't the next"
Oh right I forgot about those people who have other ways to get to work/school but choose public transport unlike me who has no choice in it and just have to hope that the train/bus is not late
Are you younger than 18? Or are you in, like, africa or south east asia?
Get a crappy car for less than $400 and work on it yourself. A car that might not start every morning is still more reliable than crappy public transportation, I can tell you that much. Because you can fix or push start a car, but you can't fix or push start a train or a bus, since they're not there.
No bike? No Uber/Lyft? Saying you have no choice is false.
Free public transport was tested in Dunkerque, France. Turns out, more people went out shopping downtown as a result, so the city had more tax income and ended up making up more money than with a paid transit system
This video combines two of my favorite things. Disney and public transit. And it looks like many of your other videos appeal to me too. Congrats, City Beautiful, you've just got yourself a new subscriber.
Former WDW VIP Tour Guide here. I used Disney Transport literally daily as part of my job and free time. It is clean, safe, and reliable. It isn't "free" but is prepaid and certainly doesn't face annual funding issues- a major burden in the "real world".
Just like its real world counterparts, there's "rush hours", peak capacities, and valleys of empty vehicles. Considering the variety and origin of its guests, and their ability to generally get where they want to, in an unfamiliar environment, possibly in a foreign language, and for only a limited duration ("Yeah, me & the wife figured out on our 2d to last day, we could've taken _____ and saved an hour..."), I think Disney Transport does an outstanding job. I do wish they'd just bite the bullet and both expand and improve the Monorail System. It is, by far, the Guest's favorite mode of transport. It captures the imagination with its design, sleek lines, and quiet comfortable ride above everyone else. The argument is cost, but if you know about Reedy Creek and LBV, then you realize Disney effectively sets its own sales tax rate on property. That means they CAN fund it with virtually zero uproar, conflict, or even knowledge of the taxpayer's awareness that they're paying it.
It’s like Rob Plays meets City Beautiful. I love it
Fun video! I was really fascinated by Disney World's trasit system when I visited and finally found a video that talks about it! Here in Bangalore, we don't have widespread metro connectivity yet which means buses are the primary mode of public transit. The bus network follows the hub-and-spoke model, resulting in many trips requiring atleast one bus transfer. I wonder what could be done to improve the experience. The city has about 6000 buses, which means frequency isn't an issue in most areas. For example, my stop has about 25 - 30 routes serving it with a peak-time headway of 45 seconds to a minute. Most other areas have a headway of 5 to 10 minutes.
Observation - While many guests use the monorail and ferry to visit the Magic Kingdom (and all of the parks), a significant portion use the bus system (which is still part of the wider discussion, but isn't your quoted 40 million on monorails/boats figure). Also, more sprawling resorts like Caribbean Beach or All Stars have multiple stops for each wing of the hotel. They're spaced a few minutes apart, much like a commuter line that picks up at a few locations before heading downtown (or to the park in this case) so many routes do indeed have more than a point A/B.
And during peak times, the express monorail is running 3-4 minute intervals.
Theme parks only have a few point of interests though. Cities will have tons and tons of it for each different individuals.
Mochamad Fachri, yes, this is certainly true, so a real city will necessarily have a larger and more complex mass transit network than WDW, but the principles used in designing the WDW network can be applied and scaled up.
Well it'd also be much harder to hit all the points. So on that end alone I'd give the disney system some penalty.
Retrofitting public transit on an urban area designed for personal motor vehicle transportation (like most US cities) does indeed make it exceedingly difficult to build a public transit network that provides convenient access between arbitrary locations within the coverage area. WDW planned and built in parallel with its public transit network, so it works exceedingly well to get to or from hub locations. It actually works quite poorly if you want to do something like travel between an arbitrary pair of hotels, since it wasn’t really design to support that use case.
Cities that grew up alongside their public transit networks generally work quite well for getting between arbitrary locations. New York City is the best example in the US, but cities like Tokyo, London, and Paris have public transit systems they work quite well.
Jerrett Walker, author of Human Transit, advocates that cities should plan their development and their public transit in coordinated fashion, so they going forward, the public transit systems CAN provide good service.
Well maybe in 3rd world countries it's all waay more difficult. I live in Indonesia, and the cities are hostile both to public and private transport alike - existing infrastructure are often not enough, and to create new dedicated RoW, usually a few things will have to be sacrificed, be it for a new transit or a new highway alike, even when trying as hard as possible to follow existing lines or roads.
At least be grateful that you have well-planned and well-regulated cities in the US. The rest goes to whether the populace wants to live (properly) in a city or not - cities in the US are equal to rural areas here by population density.
Mochamad Fachri, yeah, in lot of developing countries, urban land use development and transportation network development can often be less well planned and regulated, resulting in urban areas that can be quite difficult to get around in. 😞
What about capacity’s impact? Some hotels constantly have nearly empty busses throughout the day while others (looking at you Coronado Springs after the new tower opened) are frequently full. That extends the 20 minute headway that you mention. I’ve seen people watch three busses come and go because they were full. I’ve also spent way too much money on Minnie Vans to avoid this problem.
I was impressed by 1. Bus Punctuality 2. Frequency 3. The Buses themselves were really clean, well maintained and extremely well air conditioned.
So what about the skyliner? Looks like the availability is nearly continuous. There are some intermediate stops, but the longest ride is only 11 minutes. The shortest route takes only 3 minutes, surely a good use of your time.
I would add some additional criteria:
Is the transit system a good use of space? I would argue that at-grade tram systems are not because they use up so much valuable urban lane space for their tracks. Dedicated bus lanes and HOV lanes usually are not as well. Subways and underground trains are great because it frees up the surface for more valuable uses.
Does the transit system detract from the aesthetics of the region, or add to it? Electric trams and electric trains fall down here because of their messy overhead power lines. Battery operated electric buses don't suffer from this problem. Dedicated HOV lanes may add extra complexity to already sprawling stacked interchanges, adding to the visual mess. Diesel buses visibly add to the air pollution of a city so they fall down here. Natural gas and electric vehicles are preferable.
Is the transit system environmentally friendly and sustainable? Again, diesel-operated vehicles leave a great deal to be desired. Natural gas vehicles can be switched to biogas when underground sources dry up, so I consider this reasonably sustainable.
Does the transit system add to a city's noise pollution, or alleviate it? Electric vehicles are usually quieter than other forms of propulsion.
Does the system (both vehicles and stations) look modern and attractive, or at least charming, cute and well-loved versus antiquated and outdated? Is this a system I would be proud to ride on, or would I feel that it's a poor substitute for the style I'd really like to travel in?
Are the waiting areas and car accommodations comfortable?
Are there any on-board services available? Restrooms? Snack, meal or drink service?
Are there any services available in the stations or waiting areas? Restrooms? Snack, meal or drink service? Incidentals such as news stands? Is there seating protected from inclement weather? Are there conveniently placed garbage cans (that are not overflowing)?
How much last mile walking is required at each end?
How many transfers are required to get to where I want to go? How many tickets must be purchased?
I would also restate a few of the criteria:
Instead of "it's a good use of my time" I'd like the more specific "is this public transit system the fastest way to get to where I want to go? If not, does it offer a compelling tradeoff that allows me to justify the extra time?"
Instead of "it's a good use of my money" I'd like the more specific "is this public transit system the cheapest way to get to where I want to go? If not, does it offer a compelling tradeoff that allows me to justify the extra expense?"
There's another dimension to cost as well, since most public transit systems are subsidized: "is this public transit system the best use of tax money, or could a competing technology accomplish our goals more cheaply or do a better job for the same money?"
I was a bit worried that demand for the Skyliner might overwhelm the system's capacity and lead to long lines. But it sounds as if things have settled down such that that's not a huge problem. The accident that occurred shortly after opening might have scared some people away! There's a lot of public anxiety about getting stranded on the system in a breakdown (in typically hot weather, without toilet facilities on board). Also some fear of heights.
I have not been back to WDW since they opened it, but I just rode the Sentosa Island gondolas in Singapore which use basically the same system. They seem to work pretty well--but a big difference is that the Sentosa gondolas are quite expensive to ride, an up-charge tourist attraction in themselves rather than a "free" transit system, which dials the passenger volume way down. There's a cheap monorail that goes there too and that gets crammed with people.
At-grade tram systems are a great use of space. Trams can seat way more people per unit of area than cars can and where they are not frequent enough to justify their own space the tracks they simply share the road with cars so they barely use any space at all.
Requiring an on-board snack, meal or drink service during your commute might mean you live too far from your job. For daily transit a no-frills experience is sufficient and even desirable for most people.
Your requirements for waiting areas all fit into the passenger experience, as a transit experience that respects its customers invests in passenger experience, this falls under criterion 5 from the video.
Walking distance at each end falls under criterion 1.
Regarding the restated criteria:
First of all the trade-off part of the questions should be dropped in my opinion. The 7 criteria take this into account. Scoring worse in one criterion can be justified by scoring better in another.
I personally think being a good use of time is more complete. A good transit system uses the majority of your time to move you closer to your destination rather than leaving you sitting around waiting and allows you to use the time to do other things you might want to do, which covers pretty much everything in the restated criterion.
Regarding cost: Walking is always cheapest, so taking public transit always has to be justified through other trade-offs, which again are the other criteria. Something is only ever a good use of your money if it gives you benefits as valuable or more valuable than the money you put in.
Regarding the tax: This is only dependent on the other criteria, a government funded investment into public transit is automatically justified if it maintains a good system or if it makes a system better, both of which are defined by the other criteria. Additionally the list appears to be to decide for yourself if taking the public transit is a good idea, which is a personal decision. Where your tax money goes, is not.
I would love to watch a video about paratransit/transit accessibility.
I'd barely consider 10 minute intervals frequent service. Most modes of transport I take usually have 5 minutes intervals or less. Having to wait outside in the rain/snow for anything more than 5 minutes tends to suck pretty hard
I get so amped when I see a new video from City Beautiful, keep up the amazing work!
The Walt Disney Company used to have a mass-transit division that was fabricating monorail and WEDway PeopleMover systems for third-parties, such as the international airport in Houston, and, of course, Walt Disney World, and EPCoT, specifically, were conceived to be a city with a mix of land uses beyond those serving guests.
The premliminary planning for EPCoT relentlessly subjugated the role of the automobile.
You should research the Capital of Canada-Ottawa’s current public transportation woes
One of my favorite parts of Disney world are the transport options like the ferries, smaller boats and monorails idk y, the parks here in Tokyo feel dull cause they don’t have all of that
"frequency is freedom" *cries in DART*
7:39 haha I didnt expect Colognes "Rathaus" Station to be in this video 😂 nice!
What is going on with Dayton? Yesterday, @WendoverProductions has a clip of the Dayton Dragons in their video about American Sports in China, and now City Beautiful features the Greater Dayton RTA in their Disney Transport video.
And now we got a shout out at the Oscars!
I remember a Disney trip in late 2012, and at the time the buses at Disney and in Dayton were the same model.
Hey City Beautiful I'm from Tehuacán who have the highest use of public transit in Mexico, around 79%, not counting ciclyst or pederestians, so the real "no particular car users" number would be around 90%.
The transportation it is not the best but you have the freedom to go anywhere anytime and that is awesome.
WDWs transportation is not made to be a public transportation system, its made to get people from the hotels to the parks and back which is where it falls apart as a real public transit.
People that go to Disney World are mostly upper middle class and don't understand public transportation, and a lot of those people are fat and get mad when they have to walk (its true i'm not apologizing for stating a fact), so instead of being more efficient with more frequent transfers Disney focuses more on direct service with longer routes and wait times. The monorail and skyliner are obviously a lot faster so they can run more in a way that makes sense than the buses, but Disney's clientele view the buses as shuttles not as public transit.
Also in regards to reliability, Disney is constantly changing their headways and staffing levels based on attendance projections, and they do change their service levels based on quarterly profits etc. So if the park in Paris or Shanghai loses money its likely that WDWs bus service will get some cuts.
frequency is very bad in my city, it is often like 30 minutes between buses.
Once when i was going home from school very late so there was a even bigger gap between buses. I had to take line 24 and then switch to line 23, but bus number 24 was to minutes late to the bus stop, and 23 was already gone so i had to wait for an hour and 7 minutes and i didn't have money for a taxi.
A) Not everyone visiting the Magic Kingdom parks in their lot; those in Disney Hotels go straight to the main gate so your base numbers are off. B) You cannot travel from resort to resort via bus without transferring, nor can you travel from the parks to Downtown Disney without transferring, so lots of transfers are needed. C) Their resorts are horribly overpriced which makes their "free" resort transit less free.
A) True, although resort guests can park in the lots if the want for free (at least they used to be). B) Mostly true, although if you want to go to another resort on the same bus route that goes from your resort to the theme park you can use that bus. C) I guess define horribly overpriced. A typical room in a deluxe resort is $300-$400 a night. You can easily pay that on a summer weekend in a generic beach hotel in the Northeast in the summer.
1. You didn't consider that DisneyTransport changes it's frequency based on crowd demands. At the end of the night, monorails and buses run much more frequently than throughout the day to cope with large crowds leaving at once. In a typical night, there will be busses lined up for larger resorts, and combination resorts such as the all-stars.
2. Disney world is the most magical place on Earth, Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth. This video does not discuss Disneyland.
Well, the 20minute critique is interesting because that only applies in the middle of the day, because Disney busses in the morning and evening are basically constant with no wait at all, other than the time to load.
I love how much you reference DC Metro in this video...
A theme park bigger than San Marino but smaller than Liechtenstein or Cork City in Ireland.
"Earth, what a planet! "
To be fair, it’s more of an entertainment complex than a theme park. Walt Disney World actually encompasses four separate theme parks, with many kilometers between them, along with golf courses, mini golf, lakes, campgrounds, water parks, and so on. It’s huge, yes, but not just a single theme park. :)
“frequency is freedom” *cries in caltrain*
Ouch. And his often do the even run? It looks like an S bahn style system in paper based on route and distance between stops and what not but if they don't have frequency at, at the very least every 20 minutes, then that's a death sentence for them!
The weekday schedule is confusing, and you are fucked if the station near you isn't a big stop. The weekend schedule is hourly and it takes twice as long to take the train as it is to drive.
So what's the point? I don't know. Public transit is a joke. It's hard to drive in SF but the second you are South of Daly City Bart it's an extreme polar opposite.... Because they are different counties WHO GIVES A FUCK.
On paper, Caltrain has a fantastic route: it runs from downtown San Jose to just short of downtown San Francisco, passing through the relatively dense downtowns of a string of cities that make up Silicon Valley.
But the system is saddled with some serious issues. Its funding and management is shared across three counties, which effectively means it is perpetually starved for funding. It shares tracks with freight trains, which puts limits on the schedule, speed, and the equipment that can be used. And it is not grade separated, which also limits train frequency to avoid massive traffic jams on the streets that cross the rails.
A system that could be an amazing mass transit artery of Silicon Valley is instead a modestly utilized service mostly for getting to and from work and baseball games. Forget about using for a night out in the big city or a weekend getaway.
Caltrain is quick, but only on the weekdays when they run express trains.
@@trainzguy2472 And no delays, breakdowns, or accidents.
I only skimmed, but my one main issue with Disney Transit wasn't really discussed that I saw: mornings and evenings. If you get on one of their buses in the middle of the day, it is comfortable, convenient, and even if you do have to wait twenty minutes for it, not too bad at all. But that is because few people are riding at this time. In the mornings, on the way to the parks, the buses are as packed as a Tokyo subway. It is standing room only, often some of the riders cannot even grab a handhold, and every start and stop along the road is another opportunity to be thrown into your fellow riders. This is the reality for morning trips, because just about every hotel guest is on a bus between 8 and 10 AM. Throw in the havoc that can be caused by a wheelchair or scooter and you have the makings of disaster. Someday, if it hasn't happened already, one of those buses is going to roll or slam and many people will be killed or injured.
This is the nature of a one-way transit system. Hotels to parks in a very narrow window. Evenings are a little better, because people leave the parks over a wider window, but it is only a little better.
I believe the Skyliner is Disney's attempt to correct some of this and, if they can manage to run this first system without causing mass heatstroke during a summer afternoon breakdown, they will probably extend it to the rest of the moderate and value resorts over a short time, because of the number of buses it can replace and the relative safety of the trip. They may end up only running the Skyliner during morning and evening rush - just my suspicion - and serve those hotels by buses during the rest of the day, to avoid those heat issues. Or perhaps they will retrofit the Skyliner cabs with solar-powered AC in the roofs - the brighter the sun, the more threat there is, but more power for the AC.
Or maybe they will hire Elon Musk to dig tunnels for them and they can run a PeopleMover system throughout the resort. Yeah, probably not, but that would be my pipe-dream.
Love the People Mover. Part of the issue can be time of year. If you go visit at an off time of the year (mid May, early November, etc.) the transit crowds can be minimal yet there's still enough service.
MTA gang for the win! sometimes it takes 5min less than expected to get to work. Other days it takes 30min longer because someone decided to dump their garbage on the tracks.
There is the Cologne/Bonn Metro at 7:38. :-) Have you been there?
That Nebula segue tho... smooth af.
I'm surprised non of the criteria was about pollution or carbon footprint.
Environmental friendliness is mostly external to how useful the service is. From the user's perspective, it indirectly falls under the "respect" criterion. Breathing in exhaust fumes or tunnel dust while waiting can get nasty, and electric vehicles typically provide a smoother ride than ICE ones. The carbon footprint is most likely lower than the alternatives regardless.
Vincent Nordkov how polluting can a transit system truly be? I’m sure is not comparable to driving cars
@@arnulfoaldaco750 It does depend, actually. Running diesel buses with low ridership can get close to private cars per passenger-km. But such services are also expensive to operate, so they tend not to last long. Electricity obviously depends on the source, although the efficiency is so much higher than combustion engines that even 100% coal would generally be better.
@@hezec Electric motors are extremely efficient in city driving conditions because they can develop tremendous torque to accelerate from a stop when compared with internal combustion engines. And accelerating from a stop is perhaps the most frequent demanding function a bus engine or motor performs.
Zagreb trams at 5:02
Yeah, I wonder how they ended up in the video :)
I think one thing that isn't really important to Disney but should be higher priority for big systems is ease of planning.
I recently had to commute with public transport for a few weeks and while the public transport system itself was quite good planning my daily trips was a bit of a nightmare.
I needed to transfer multiple times and with about 10 possible routes that could each be optimal at different times.
Using a map for scenario is not really possible, common apps didn't fully support the transport system and their own alternative was an absolute nightmare.
I spend so much time planning my commute and changing it on the fly because some bus was early or late.
You kept saying it's an unfair comparison because they got to build the stations to service only planned locations. Yet a train station is likely to be in the same place for 100 years or more. The places people live and work change faster than that. Their has to be a reasonable case for building a well set up transport system and letting everything else work its self out around it.
I legit use your content to find references for my architecture essays. You're a champ!
I remember when I was in the Disney College Program the guest buses were way more reliable than the ones destined for cast members. I heard a lot changed in the past three to four years but I remember sometimes missing my bus and having to wait over an hour in the summer heat to catch a bus with no ac that broke down on the road multiple times.
A fellow CP!! Yeah Ive taken Disney transport to get around crapoy cp transport.
I wonder why they'd put basically no effort in transportation for their cast members.
Where Disney Transport isn't great is when you need to go from one hotel to another, like for a dinner reservation.
True, definitely an area they could improve but I can see where that would be a low priority. Best bet if not just driving your car between the resorts is to go to a theme park and switch buses there to one for the other resort, or if after theme park hours taking the bus to Disney Springs (old Downtown Disney).
10:44 that segway tho
Idk why but I saw this and I thought Segway as in the personal transportation vehicle. The "Segway" you intended is spelled segue.
Have you ever taken a bus from one of the parks or Springs to a value resort (Pop Century, AoA or All Star) and noticed it’s always toward the very end of the station?
That’s by design. The more you paid for a resort, the closer your bus is to the park.
Makes sense. Pretty sure the value resorts are also physically located farther from the parks which doesn't help.
7:38 My favourite station, I use it regularly.
Although I am a bit surprised that he featured this station
Routes and headway are key.
On weekdays, The 4 routes a block from my home run every 10-15 minutes, 3 run to downtown (work) and all to the light rail. I hardly need a schedule, but I use one to figure out which route I will take.that will get me to my destination fastest. [I gave up my car after realizing I hardly need it any more.]
For a few months, I needed to go to medical appointments in the suburbs. I thought I was lucky because a bus ran directly from my office to a stop in front of the clinic. I took it - once. 30 minute headways don't make a convenient trip for a 1 hour appointment. [I switched to ride hail ... I don't take the bus for financial reasons, but for convenience.]
Here are some facts:
Disney transport is good because of the theme park.
They don’t need to be fast, as if you are there, you are most likely on vacation.
They go everywhere, because they are built for each area to access it.
If the transit was a separate company, it would earn a lot less money, because the park pays the transport.
In the end, Disney is a great transit company as long as they are part of Disney.
Where I went to university had the largest free bus system in the free world, paid mostly by student fees. It made boarding super fast, and thus the routes noticably faster.
Surely "legibility" is a matter of Google Maps now? When I lived in Oslo a couple of months a decade and a half ago, it had an app/website for entering your origin and destination street address, and desired travel time, and getting a full set of options, including walking to, from and between transit stops. I loved it.
I will borrow at this model and critique to the US National Parks that have bus transit like at Grand Canyon. This was very good!
A lot of people don't know just how sophisticated transportation systems run by the Federal Lands division of FHWA can become. They're essentially the DOT for the federally-owned/administered land: tribes, federal land management agencies (of which the National Parks is one) and military bases. This includes transit at the largest and most visited national parks and monuments.
I think you should really visit Prague. The current state of city planning isn't the greatest, but our public transport system is one of the greatest in the world
I think that this topic is useful in seeing the interaction between land use and planning. This system undoubtedly works well in part because the people and the places that they want to be are very clustered. Buses can be offered from each resort to each park because the density of resorts makes passenger volume at each node high. Since there are fewer total nodes than in a sprawling city, frequency can be increased.
I worked at Disney World. At peak times such as closing they run buses more then every 20 min. They need to clear out parks asap to start deep cleaning and maintenance at night. The monorail between Epcot and Magic Kingdom Parking is every 5 min or less. I worked under a station and heard the arrival constantly lol.
Given how integrated it is with the App and the wristbands and whatnot now at Disney, they should be able to let each user "call" a bus to their location at a certain time - then they could use that information to influence their bus routes/number of buses. They probably have something behind the scenes they already do like a dispatcher who looks at live video from the bus stops to see how many are waiting and makes adjustments accordingly.
There have been more then that one incidents on the monorail system then the shoe falling off. It’s become one of the least reliable system Disney has.
Hey, I came here because of Planning Ancient Rome, which was amazing, but there was one thing I wasn't entirely clear on: is that going to be a series of some sorts or was it a one-off?
You mentioned the trade off of free service vs better service, which got me thinking about why doesn’t Disney offer VIP shuttle options, say $100/day for up to 6 people for a pass to ride a limo immediately rather than waiting for a bus or monorail.
Since Disney is all about the Benjamins I don’t think they *don’t* offer such a service because it would promote a feeling of elitism and further the visibility of the class divide, so I wonder why they don’t. Perhaps rich people don’t go to Disney in the first place?
I think this is a great thought exercise to help reflect on the bigger issues of mass transit in the USA, why its widely perceived as being a service “for the poor” in most suburban areas.
John Early technically they do have a private shuttle option called the Minnie Van which is a partnership with Lyft. Based on the article I read from 2018, there was a minimum of $15 ride with most rides being between $25-40
What Hannah B said!
Hannah B interesting! Capitalism once again leaves no market unfulfilled 🤔
They also tested an express bus option in early 2017 that cost $19/person for a single day or $29/person for multiple days. The bus would pick up inside the park and go directly to another park and drop the passengers off inside the security area. This allowed the passengers to skip the security screening at the entrance to the park, since they already went through it at the first park. After 8 months, this service ended due to low demand.
@@JakeLunceford My suspicion with that is that most people don't want to park hop. I've done it a few times but generally it's easier to just focus on time in one park. The only exception was going to Epcot to dine at the many restaurants in the World Showcase later in the day.
Could you do more of these analyses on other, real-world transit networks?
They say that buses run every 20 minutes, but that’s not really true. There were times when I waited over 30 minutes for a bus. That can be very frustrating if you need to be somewhere at a certain time. There are really no good alternatives at many locations around Disney property, and there are no bus schedules to consult. You just have to wait out in the Florida humidity for an unknown period of time until your bus shows up.
Also, the buses go to all the major destinations without transferring. But if you need to make an unusual trip (like Typhoon Lagoon to Animal Kingdom) there’s no sensible way to do it, and your trip can take like three hours, when it could be a 20 minute drive.
For the majority of guests it just isn't practical to try to go to multiple parks, etc. in the same day even if you have some sort of park hopper pass.
@@jimzecca3961, I completely agree. In my opinion, it's best to spend an entire day at one park. That will allow you to experience most of the attractions that are on offer. If you try to shuttle between different parks, you'll waste a lot of time in transit.
One thing to add relative to the efficiency of Disney transport - there's no pay as you go. It's all included in the cost of your resort and theme park tickets. Not having to deal with selling passes (and people being confused about the price, passes, etc. who aren't locals) makes it easier. Also, you have a group mindset among your passengers - I'm here on vacation and I'm going to a theme park.
The 20 minute interval is a mid day thing. In the peak hours (mornings as the park opens, evenings as people go back to hotels,) they lower it to 10 or so. I've also seen when that when a very large line formed that they could call for an extra bus to deal with the overflow.
The 20 Minute Headway for the buses is mainly for Deluxe Resorts like the Contemporary and Wilderness Lodge; Most Value and Moderate resorts have bus headway to the parks 10 minutes or better. When i have been the last few times; i opted to stay at Pop Century becuase the buses are very frequent especially to the Magic Kingdom and use the 60 ft buses.
When Disney Transport is better then my city’s transport.
This combines my two top interests: Disney World and mass transit! Man I'm a nerd.
So the Tallinn public transport is pretty good. It's free, trams come every 3-5 mins and buses every 5 - 20 mins
these resorts are main money making outlets for the companies who earlier made it Disney being the first ones and others followed, if taken good care of, maintained, you can make out from their financial sheets that these are their main money making projects
A monorail is really more of a Shelbyville idea.
As someone who's attended Disney quite a bit, the bus is definitely getting less and less reliable. I've been stranded for over an hour on multiple occasions. The alternate forms of transportation are great tho. Especially the SkyLiner.
Bravo, bravo. So valuable information. Thank you, I was hoping to see exactly this here.
I was in Japan this past summer and never found myself stranded for need of public transportation. I'd trade my car for good public transit any day.
This is so true! I moved to Tokyo a few months ago, and I’ve traveled a lot throughout Honshu, and it has been very easy to get around, even in very rural areas, just using public transit. It is so freeing!
Interesting to see how well the dedicated bus lanes work coming from Disney Springs. Seem to be very effective.
It's only difficult to provide transit service to every single person in a metro area if parts of the metro area are either of too low a population density to support transit service, and/or barriers make routes that include certain areas difficult to plan an efficient route around (i.e. an area cut off by a freeway).
Besides, most people at Disney world who flew there usually get a rental car at the airport, plus, with a rental car, you can stay at hotels that don't have direct access to Disney transit
Do a lot of people use the Magic Express (?) airport transfer feature to get to their Disney resort without needing a rental?
As someone who goes to Disney annually, I can say while yes, the transportation systems are reliable, id still leave yourself extra time if you are headed for a reservation or something. Disney tries to be as consistent as they can, but that isn’t always the case
Walt Disney World was originally planned with a full mix of land uses.
One summer we were in the contemporary hotel. From there to Epcot was about an hour and 15 minutes. The buses, and rails were past capacity constantly. Havent been back, it was 5 years ago.
Was that right when the park opened for the day? We were in Disney 5 years ago at the Yacht Club and I don't recall any long waits for buses, etc. We went in August.
Honestly this is such a good idea - i bet for many Americans, their introduction to transit is through disney transport.
At 1:10, the street grid in the background of the "Hard Math" arrow is the street grid in Vancouver BC! 16th Ave and Granvillle St right in the middle.
It’s crazy how Disney can have pretty decent transit yet also require some of the largest surface parking lots I’ve ever seen. I mean seriously… does the magic kingdom need 12 THOUSAND parking spaces?