Last month when I said more people in New Orleans needed private transportation to help save them from disaster, some readers took me to task and said public mass transit would be a better answer.
Here’s another interesting take on the idea I had not mentioned, noting public mass transit is not designed to do in an emergency evacuation what proponents envision. Designing a system to get people to and from work results in a very different system than one designed to evacuate a city, which means taking them from their homes out of the city altogether. Good article, read the whole thing.
We followed up with this post on basic transportation addressing the cost issue since some said the poor simply can’t afford a car.
This issue brings out the whole debate and you quickly get two general sides forming up, one says public mass transit, and smarter, more agressive government action in general, is the answer, the other side says individual responsibility plus the free market can do more with the added benefit of flexibility and instant response. The Kneeslider is firmly in the individual responsibility camp but I know many of our readers take the other view though they might not phrase it that way. It’s an interesting debate and everyone learns when we examine the issues, I know I do.
Update: and telecommuting keeps people out of the city in the first place
Doug says
thanks for the additional reading, but I don’t believe the article provided compelling facts and arguments for me. The article states the 30 mile train journey from New Orleans to a nearby town takes 1 hour. Does this timeframe account for all of the scheduled stops during routine operation? Also, the article states the train capacity but doesn’t assume that people would be willing to stand as long as they have a ride out during an emergency (I once stood 3/4 of a greyhound trip from Erie, PA to Butler over Thanksgiving – not sure if Greyhound still does that, but the driver continued to make the stops, regardless of the crowded bus. We all seemed to accommodate one another). Having said that, I didn’t realize the trains couldn’t hold as many as I originally thought, however, this wouldn’t stop me from implementing an evacuation plan that included rail.*
I don’t completely follow the argument about mass transit being designed to take people to and from a city for work purposes and therefore is not equipped to evacuate a city. [hindsight is skewing all of our arguments]….With a more coordinated evacuation awareness the mass transit system can be used in emergencies. For example, westcoast roadways have Tsunami & Volcano evacuation route signs all over the place…eastcoast has the same for hurricanes. Similar signs can be posted at bus stops & rail stops to designate which are and which aren’t the spot to be picked up. It is the citizens responsibility to know these spots &, as the emergency unfolds, know the times (likely to vary). It is also the citizens responsibility to make tough decisions like leave their pets behind so collecitvely another handful of people can board.
*hypothetical scenario that scientists say will happen (not if):
one of the Canary Islands off the nortwest coast of Africa has an earthquake and creates a landslide into the sea. The resulting “mega tsunami” races towards the central part of North America (i.e. Boston, NYC, & even Miami are in the danger zone). Sure, the response time in this extreme case is much less than the hurricanes provide. But would the lack of response time be better for the mass transit than cars – citing dangerous, frantic driving? Also, NYC has plenty of non-car owning residents because it doesn’t make sense to own a car for most of NYC residents (poor or not). This extreme case & reduced time to evacuate necessitates our communities to get more organized & coordinated with what to do, both as individuals looking out for ourselves & neighbors (the govt. should be included in this process or I want my money back).
finally from this soapbox…Houston seemed to have problems with their highway evacuation. I don’t mention that to discount the highway as one of several means to evacuate; but more as a means to caution those that favor more cars as the means to evacuate. If there were trouble spots in the current evacuation, there will certainly be more trouble with increased cars evacuating. Isn’t the answer found in a better coordinated effort across many means instead of just saying “Private Transportation Saves Lives”?