Gay Days begins annual festival in Orlando as parks celebrate Pride Month
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Tens of thousands of LGBTQ+ people are flocking to central Florida this weekend to go on theme park rides, mingle with costumed performers, dance at all-night parties and lounge poolside at hotels during Gay Days, a decades-long tradition. The event comes despite warnings from advocacy groups to not visit Florida.
Read more from The Associated Press.
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wahoo skipper:
Gas tax proceeds are used for roadways.
*Pushes up glasses* Well actually, gas taxes don't exclusively fund road infrastructure.
This was a bit of a passion of mine for awhile since anytime a bike lane is built in Pittsburgh everyone goes bananas about wasting money on bike lanes.
Gas taxes are largely used to fund infrastructure maintenance and new projects, but the amount of state and local road spending covered by gas taxes, tolls, user fees, and user taxes varies widely among states. It ranges from only 6.9 percent in Alaska to 71 percent in Hawaii.
Florida actually is pretty good but I suspect that's largely because of the heavy use of tolls.
Gas taxes and other fees paid by drivers now cover less than half of road construction and maintenance costs nationally – down from more than 70 percent in the 1960s – with the balance coming chiefly from income, sales and property taxes and other levies on general taxpayers.
Yes. I didn't want to nerd out too much but you are correct...gas taxes are a declining revenue source (thanks to the likes of families like Jeff's who are turning to EVs). That explains why we are seeing more and more toll roads across the state.
I cannot use any of the gas tax revenue for general operations, non-roadway capital projects, etc. My county passed a transportation surtax a few years back and those revenues are being earmarked for transportation, mobility projects, roadways, etc.
"You can dream, create, design, and build the most wonderful place in the world...but it requires people to make the dreams a reality." -Walt Disney
Many states are now shifting the cost of EV owners to their annual vehicle registration fees. In Illinois, as an example, the fee for a ICE is $151 per year while an EV will $251 per year. Initially some lawmakers wanted to charge over $1k each year for EV registration. We have to EVs in our household, one pure EV and the other a plug-in hybrid. I'm perfectly fine with paying $251 for the ID.4 registration. On the Volt I only pay $151, yet 95% of my miles are electric. What irks me is the luxury EVs that I see driving around with standard plates.
Back to (sort of) the original topic:
Went to SFGAdv Pride night last night (I think it was called "Ride With Pride"). Marketing of the event was pretty limited as far as I could tell, and even the logistics were poorly explained. Even after about four emails with their customer service agent*, I wasn't sure how things were going to work.
It turned out that you needed a special ticket for the event - you could enter the park at any time, however, and annual passes/memberships worked too. At some point, we discovered - mostly by accident - that we needed a special wristband to stay later than the regular 7 pm closing. At 7:00, all rides closed for an hour; food and merch stands** stayed open.
At this point the park was weirdly deserted - especially weird since the whole "everything closes at 7:00" thing had not been explained.
The event was fine and fairly well executed, but attendance was practically non-existent. Weather did not help - the park had been almost empty beforehand other than school or camp groups - it had rained earlier and more rain was predicted (but didn't happen). The pride activities consisted of a DJ, some fireworks - a lot of fireworks, actually - and a drag show (which we skipped), and a couple decorations.
Operations were ... kinda great. (I mean, it's easy to seem great when there are no lines. Literally, re-rides on Nitro if you wanted.) But ride ops were hustling, employees were friendly, the place was clean and everything looked well-maintained and freshly painted.
Downside: El Toro is still closed. Kingda Ka was closed after a cable break a few days ago. Water rides were not running (although we didn't really want them given the weather). A few other scattered rides were closed, but all the other coasters were running. They didn't half-ass things in spite of attendance. We'll see if they ever do it again, given how empty the park was.
*Their customer service rep, and I do not really need to tell you how shocking this is, was very helpful, replied promptly, and wrote the friendliest emails I think I've ever gotten from a big company. And offered us some exit gate passes, which we did not end up needing...
**Among the merch stands is a place called Party Pooper, which sells hats shaped like the poop emoji, in different colors, including rainbows, and I do not understand the world anymore.
Sounds like a good time was had by some. We are heading to SFGAdv next week. I'm holding out hope that either Ka or El Toro will be up and running by then. If not, there is enough new-to-us rides to keep us busy. The last time I was there The Chiller was still a thing, running both sides, and had OTSRs on the Batman side. Yeah, it's been awhile.
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