Florida legislature turns over Disney monorail inspections to FDOT

I don't particularly have a problem with this. Disney might transport more people on an annual basis than any publicly owned mass transit in the state. FDOT oversight of this particular function doesn't seem like an overreach to me.

The volume of riders is not correlated to whether or not it's safe. And how much additional funding will FDOT get?

Will DeSantis cronies be placed in FDOT to purposely close the monorail?

That's kind of the point, I would assume. There are various ways FDOT could handle this if it were intended in good faith, to ensure public safety. They could ask Disney for their own maintenance records. They could assign a team to inspect the monorails directly, although it seems obvious nobody in FDOT is going to be as familiar with how the monorail works as Disney's own people. They could insist on outside evaluations. These wouldn't necessarily be terrible, any more than having a ride inspector check out Space Mountain periodically. Does it belong with the transportation department instead of whatever department inspects amusement rides? I'm not sure it matters a ton, although if there is a Florida amusement ride safety department that has been inspecting the monorail, I would think they have specialized knowledge by now.

It seems much more likely this department is going to be staffed by a team that will decide to shut down the monorail at a moment's notice, during spring break or the day after Thanksgiving, at the direction of someone in the governor's office, to embarrass Disney and infuriate their customers. See also: Chris Christie and the George Washington Bridge. Why exactly DeSantis thinks that will work to his benefit is unclear, but I think we're way past the point where any kind of coherent strategy is guiding the governor's actions.

ETA: I suppose the threat of shutting down the monorail on the day after Thanksgiving could be used to try to bring Disney into line. And DeSantis seems clumsy enough to try that. I don't really see Disney bending in response, though.

If he does that they'll have buses ready and make it work.

People gotta transport.

Exactly. The monorail has gone down before at the worst possible time and in a matter of minutes a fleet of busses are added along with extra ferries. Likewise, the same happens often when there is high wind and they shut down the ferries. Busses are always on standby so any threat to shut down the monorail, will just be met with more transportation.

How has the bus situation changed? They're clearly leaning on that vendor pretty hard right now.

Aside from him being pathologically vindictive, I don't get the political motivation behind this at this point.

The Disney war is a bad look for DeSantis, his poll numbers are tanking and it apparently even rubs Republicans the wrong way. He's supposed to be launching a presidential run any day now. Keeping this going in the news cycle isn't going to benefit him.

Well he did a lousy job battling the coronavirus, so he's trying to make up for it against the woke mind virus.

Are you talking about off-property transportation with Mears? Property wide transportation is done in-house and not with a vendor.

An awful lot of busses are still being run by Academy.

Oh those! They have the contract for the college program kids to get from their housing to the parks, resorts, stores on 192, etc. There is a pretty sizable operation that runs almost 24/7 for those 10,000 or so Cast Members.

@Le Monster

Facts are funny things:

https://www.nationalreview....-election/

I mean… it really depends on who you are asking.

Since February, Trump is up 10 points, while DeSantis is down 7.

https://www.foxnews.com/off...ipping.amp

Individual polls, such as the one cited by Skyboss, aren't very meaningful in general, and are effectively useless this far out from the primary. Always better to refer to polling averages, and FiveThirtyEight shows Trump with a commanding ~30 point lead.

National Review and Fox are not what I'd call news. 538 does aggregate math, and while polling as a science has changed an awful lot, the site is not colored by bias.

While it is quite telling that Skyboss cited National Review, the piece he linked to cites Mason-Dixon polling, which is rated as a good pollster according to FiveThirtyEight.

Polls are polls. Whatever. But The National Review does not like Trump at all so it's not surprising that they would pump up this particular poll.