In which I lambast Florida

My 2017 was three hours shorter than most people’s. That’s because I celebrated 2017’s arrival on the West Coast, and I welcomed 2018’s arrival on the East Coast—in the Epcot park of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. We chose to spend New Years’ at Epcot partially because the weather was supposed to be much more pleasant than in California. It wasn’t. Our visit coincided with the formation of the explosive cyclogenesis winter storm Grayson. I wore four layers on New Years’ Day. But I digress.

It was my second time traveling to Florida—both ever, and in the same calendar year. Florida is quite unlike any other place I have visited. It’s like the Wild West. Humans have not subjugated the animal species that naturally live there; cell phone service is sparse at best; the summer weather renders the state uninhabitable; human settlements are separated by miles; and, the primary focus of this piece: transit and accessibility are abysmal.

Our Uber driver picks us up from Orlando International Airport, whose concourses and runways were likely built on landfill, as they are separated from the main terminal by lakes. (By the way, lakes and ponds are everywhere in the Orlando area. Google Maps makes it look like Orlando has freckles. Often, highway cloverleaf interchange ramps wrap around ponds.) We drive for about ten minutes past acres of completely uninhabited, unsettled land, when suddenly, a dense collection of newer-looking houses appears just to the left of the freeway. If you don’t look fast enough, they disappear as quickly as they had appeared. The landscape returns to the absence of human settlement. Where did the demand for these houses come from? Where do the residents go grocery shopping? Why was this plot of land selected for a neighborhood over any identical plot a quarter-mile down the road? Who the hell would want to live here?

Virtually only one mode of transit is available in Florida: the private automobile. It’s a chicken-or-egg question: did the reliance on cars cause the sprawl, or did the sprawl cause the reliance on cars? (Maybe it’s both.) There is little demand for a public transportation system in a place where gas prices are so cheap (almost a dollar cheaper per gallon than what I’m used to paying in San Francisco) and the potential station locations would be separated by miles. There is also little reason to even construct sidewalks. Summer weather is so uncomfortable that traveling in an air-conditioned car is admittedly far more preferable. My ex went to undergraduate in Tampa. He lived in a house approximately 300 feet from a CVS as the crow flies; and yet, he drove to the store every time because “everyone drives in Florida.”

Complete dependence on the automobile for transit has at least one fascinating consequence. We had heard that the Disney parks often reach capacity midday on New Years’ Eve and stop letting additional guests enter. So when we got stuck in stop-and-only-occasionally-go traffic a mile away from Epcot, we feared that the park was already reaching capacity at 10:30 AM. However, as we got closer to the gate into the parking lot, we realized that the parking agents were only letting one car enter the lot every few seconds, even though all the lanes were open. Disney took advantage of the fact that cars are the only way for guests to enter and shifted the guest entry bottleneck to the parking lot and surface streets. When we actually entered the park, it was surprisingly uncrowded. (Of course, that changed as the day went on, and the park did eventually hit capacity at approximately 6 PM.) I contrasted this flow management system to Disneyland in Anaheim. Disneyland has little control over how fast guests reach the park gates because myriad hotels are within walking distance of the park. Disney cannot meter walk-up guests in the same way that they can guests that drive. Additionally, Disney does not own the adjacent property and roadways in Anaheim; in Orlando, Disney owns acres and acres of land surrounding its parks. Thus, it is a private corporation’s decision whether or not to build infrastructure—a sidewalk, perhaps—that is typically considered a public good. Perhaps Disney benefits from deliberately restricting its guests’ mode choice for park access.

Public sidewalks and pedestrian access are difficult to come by even on public land in Florida. One morning during my first visit to Florida, we walked to Waffle House from our hotel. We could see it out of our hotel room window; it must have been a 500 foot straight-shot to the restaurant. Yet the walk, which was technically “around the corner”, ended up being half a mile. For the first half of this journey there was no sidewalk to traverse; and on our way, we passed a pond with a “Warning: Alligators” sign posted next to it. On the return trip, a snake cut in front of our walking path. (Again with the Wild West thing.) Both legs of the trip ended in our faces dripping with sweat.

 

The walking route from our hotel to Waffle House. You can't make this stuff up.

On this most recent trip, we stayed at a hotel with a 7-11 and a couple restaurants across the street. There were no sidewalks bordering the hotel’s asphalt driveway; we had to walk up the driveway to reach the traffic signal. We waited three minutes before the light changed and allowed us to cross the street. It was as if the stoplight was taking time to consult its emergency procedures manual—“In case of a pedestrian…” (Now, of course, it must be specified that “the street” was Florida State Highway 192, but the absurdity of the story still stands.)

It's not clear whether the car dependence caused the sprawl or vice versa, but one thing is for certain: the car dependence is indicative of sprawl. Therefore, the only reasonable conclusion that arose from these experiences is that overpopulation cannot possibly be an issue on a planet where Florida exists.