Friday, September 23, 2005

Running from mother nature

It's not surprising that our neglected transportation systems cannot handle the evacuation from Hurricane Rita. What is surprising is that there are no government computer scientists who can model these huge problems and figure out ways to feed the vehicles onto the highways so that the traffic can move instead of sitting in a huge parking lot.

What is hard to believe is that we don't have enough roads to move people. I would like to think an evacuation plan is more than just someone assuming that everyone could get on the roads at the same time. People practice evacuations of buildings. Perhaps we need to get serious about planning and practicing evacuations. If the problem is everyone on the same roads at the same time, I guess we need to figure out other ways to get people out of towns. I might be wrong but I sure would like to hear from some transportation experts as to why the system seems to be breaking down.