TransSec preview: U.S. evacuation plans lacking, study finds

A study recently conducted for the American Highway Users Alliance has found that evacuation plans and routes for major U.S. urban areas are sorely lacking. The study was conducted for the alliance by Wendell Cox of Demographia. “It’s the first such study that we’re aware of, and probably the first that’s been attempted at this level,” Cox told TransSec.

One problem with the issue of urban evacuation is simply that no one was thinking seriously about it until 9/11, Cox says. “Another problem is agreeing on the assumptions about what might happen. So for example planners in San Francisco are more concerned about a major earthquake, which is a different idea from planning for a rogue bomb that someone plants somewhere.”

The problem is compounded by what Cox calls “really, really bad analysis” of real-life evacuations such as those of New Orleans (Hurricane Katrina) and parts of Houston (Hurricane Rita). Political factors also come into play: while many people said the evacuation of New Orleans was hampered because the city’s transit system is sub-par, Cox says that in fact the system is very good and was simply under- (or un-) utilized because the authorities didn’t even try to get it into service.

The study examined 37 large urban centers each with a population of over a million. We’ll have a more detailed discussion in the next print edition of TransSec.