[sandworm101]

A mobile and well-resourced population is a cornerstone of US disaster planning. When a hurricane is comming and an evacuation order given, the assumption is that most americans can drive themselves.

Mass transit is cool, but evacuating an entire modern city on busses isnt viable. (Inter-city rail connections cannot be scaled up in such times.)

[jeromegv]

Makes no sense. You can’t evacuate a full city on cars. It would get clogged all the way. You would want to use the entire bus system. Don’t know why you say it’s not viable, you can scale up passenger/meters much more with buses.

[bluGill]

No you can't. The problem is we don't have enough buses to do that. Every mass bus system large enough to have significant people on the bus works on the model of the bus running all day with a large number of people who use it. That is it goes in full, heads back out, and picks up more people before heading back in.

In the evacuation model those buses drive out a day full, and then need to drive a day to get back before they can pick up more people. It just doesn't work. No transit system has enough buses.

That is before we point out that if you have anywhere near that many people served you probably have some rail systems that cannot operate outside their lines (third rail power or overhead electric)

Cars have the advantage of there are enough of them. Note that in most evacuation situations the cars are full. (the roads don't have the capacity, but the cars do)

[shkkmo]

It is much easier to stage extra buses near areas that will need rapid evacuation then it is to scale up road infrastructure. There is a fixed limit on howany people can be moved by car out of major metropolitan areas, conversely, most major metropolitan areas are with 12 hours drive of other major metropolitan bus areas which means that well staged buses could easily arrive to rapidly scale evacuation speed. Finally, as car based evacuation reaches it's limit, the rate dramatically decreases, there is no such issue with buses.

[sandworm101]

It is more complicated than just moving people. Anyone traveling by bus isnt bringing stuff with them. They need shelter. The US evacuation model assumes most people will bring enough with them in thier cars to be self-sustaining for a period of days. The assumption is tgat 90+% of people wont need government help... due to thier independant mobility of people and stuff.

See the recent evac of fort mcmurray canada. That was all cars for hundreds of miles. No hope for busses there.

[shkkmo]

The "car" evacuation plan seemed to have verged on failure in Fort McMurray. People didn't have enough gas and the roads were clogged. The 25,000 people who fled north ran short of supplies quickly.

So the assumption that "90% of people won't need government help" clearly failed to hold true for this relatively small evacuation of 88k people.

[bluGill]

There are logistical issues to be improved on, but if (big if) we learn from experience we can solve them.

The fact remains, most people who are told to evacuate by car will pack their suitcases and enough spending cash so that they can live on their own once they get out. The majority will end up sleeping on the floor of friends/relatives, so once you get them out of danger you don't think about them again. All that is required is enough warning that they can pack (if you don't have this much warning nothing can work anyway), and enough fuel (accounting for gridlock!) along the way.

Government needs to deal with the small number of people who cannot care for themselves, but the vast majority of people can be self sufficient, and having their personal car makes them more self sufficient.

[jeromegv]

What are you suggesting exactly? I don't quite grasp your point

We shouldn't use bus when they are available for evacuation? Why? If we can get all the bus to be used + add bus from other cities nearby, why should we prevent people from using them? This is scaling much better and people with cars are free to leave with their own cars.

"Cars have the advantage of there are enough of them." --Surely not the case in many urban cities.

[bluGill]

I'm suggesting that all the buses in the city, are not enough to make a significant dent in the evacuation needs. This would be the case even if all transit in the city was by bus (no train/subway, and no private cars - obviously this is unrealistic).

[burfog]

Buses also don't work. Disasters are disastrous.

New Orleans had huge numbers of school buses. They went unused and were destroyed by flooding.

You might demand that the government not be incompetent, but the reality is that government will screw up badly. Individuals with cars can screw up, but the effects are limited to the people screwing up.

[sandworm101]

Who said anything about "full city"? Most /= all.

[jschwartzi]

The disaster planning argument is a huge red herring. I've yet to see my home city evacuated like you're saying for any reason. Whereas I've spent the last 17 years driving around everywhere for lack of any other options. So it seems to me like disaster planning is something we would have time to think about even if my city replaced all of our cars with trains and buses. So it just doesn't seem very important.