Dave Land wrote:
On Sep 23, 2005, at 7:48 AM, Robert J. Chassell wrote:
According to the Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3366165
A road can carry a maximum number of vehicles. Add more vehicles
and the rate drops. (Substract vehicles below the maximum and the
rate drops, too.) All this is well known -- very well known.
Does anyone know why it took so long for officials to start
contraflowing those roads? It must have driven people crazy to sit
for hours in that sweltering heat, looking across the barrier at all
those empty lanes.
No, but if I find any info related to that as I sort through newspapers
in a bit, I'll be sure to report what I have.
The three main evacuation routes that I heard discussed were I-10, US
290 and I-45. I-10 and I-45 are the ones that were eventually
contraflowed. US 290 was left 2-way so emergency vehicles could get to
Houston in a hurry if needed, and there have been staging areas set up
near 290 for loading trucks with emergency supplies and having them
ready to go as soon as they're needed. (In the Austin area. One high
school football game was postponed specifically because they were using
the relevant parking lot as a staging area. It's got to be a pretty big
thing to mess with football schedules around here....)
It may be that federal approval was needed for contraflowing the roads.
If that's the case, the general dissatisfaction with the federal
response of Katrina is just going to snowball that much more. :P
Julia
Is FEMA going to be a dirty word by the end of the year (in those
quarters it's not already one)?
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