I'm rethinking how I feel about Blanco and Nagin

A Way Out

The emergence of homeland security stresses the importance of evacuation management
Despite advances, the subject of evacuation has been a widely overlooked issue within the transportation field.

- BRIAN WOLSHON, PH.D., P.E.

One of the more critical, though commonly overlooked, aspects of transportation planning and management is evacuation. This is not surprising since evacuations have largely been viewed as a regional issue with a low probability of occurrence. Over the last five years, however, homeland security concerns and the problems associated with several evacuations have brought more attention to the need to improve evacuation planning and management, a subject that has been overlooked within the transportation community. But this view is changing.
Look this way

Reliance on highway-based evacuations has grown over the years. Prior to the construction of the interstate system, there were limited means to move people out of major population centers and few places to shelter them once they did. As a result, sheltering in-place was the most common method of early civil protection. More systematic approaches to evacuation planning developed during the Cold War in response to the threat of nuclear attack and grew more sophisticated in the ’60s and ’70s to protect against nuclear power plant accidents. Hurricane evacuation planning also advanced during this period as satellite meteorology gave weather forecasters the ability to track storms several days out to sea. In more recent times, the application of computer modeling and geographic information systems (GIS) have been used to analyze the traffic conditions associated with cross-state evacuations.

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Improved evacuation of low-mobility groups

Transportation infrastructure in the U.S. has developed to serve vehicular traffic. While reliance on personal transportation works reasonably well under routine conditions, it can cause significant challenges for emergency management officials. The number of people without access to transportation in New Orleans has been estimated as high as 25-30% of the population and includes over a quarter million people. In addition to people without vehicles, potential evacuees can include the indigent, elderly, prisoners, the infirm and tourists. Evacuation of these low-mobility and special needs groups is an area that, while included in most state emergency operation plans, has been largely unaddressed by DOTs.

Busing has been the most common mode of transportation for low-mobility groups, and in the past emergency management agencies have contracted with local transit authorities, school districts and tour operators with varying levels of success. However, many heavily populated cities do not have a sufficient supply of buses to move all low-mobility evacuees. The total number of buses in all of New Orleans would provide only a fraction of the capacity needed to transport all of these people. To counter this problem, Louisiana emergency management officials are working through local churches to encourage “good neighbor” strategies in which neighbors with means of transportation would assist those without during an evacuation.

http://hurricane.lsu.edu/_in_the_news/tmemag0404.htm