Are more roads the answer to mass evacuation?

Point/Counterpoint

Last October, when local TV news featured a study that gave Los Angeles an F for its ability to evacuate in an emergency, the lowest score in the report, most of us here laughed and didn't question it. Anybody who has ever tried to leave the city on a Friday evening knows that if everyone had to leave at the same time, we'd all be up the freeway without a paddle.

After the American Highway Users Alliance released their report on Oct. 12, a Chicago newspaper questioned the study, not based on its methodology, nor even on the grades handed out to 37 U.S. cities, most of them failing. Pointing out that two key recommendations in the report focused on building more roads and providing cars to those who don't have them, the Chicago Red Eye also noted that the ahua is made up of car makers and highway builders.

"Yes, it's suspicious when they have an agenda," says Madhu Beriwal, president of consulting company Innovative Emergency Management. "But you have to give a look at what they're saying, if it's valid or not, and whether their solutions would or would not work."

Greg Cohen, the AHUA's president,  acknowledges that the group is made up of various industrial associations, including trucking associations, bus associations, a few highway builders groups, auto clubs and car makers. "Overall, it's an even spread," he says. "Our biggest percentage [of members] comes from car companies."

He also says that the study, authored by transportation and demographics expert Wendell Cox, was never intended as the final word on the state of evacuation plans in the U.S. "It's just telling the story of a ‘what if' situation. Hopefully, a planner will look at that and ask, ‘What can we learn from this?'"

But the experts HPP interviewed say emergency planners probably won't learn much, partly because of the report's focus on transportation only.

Patrick Crawford, director of Midwest regions for James Lee Witt Associates, which does private-sector emergency planning, agrees that the AHUA has expertise on the transportation side. And he and others take pains to point out that the alliance report does have value in getting people aware of the need for evacuation planning.

The problem is that while roads and traffic are key parts of a city's ability to evacuate, they aren't the whole story.

"Evacuation is a multi-disciplinary endeavor," says Dennis Mileti, professor emeritus, University of Colorado – Boulder and vice chair of the California Seismic Safety Commission.

Emergency planners need to be thinking about the whole range of issues, including how much warning would be available, how to effectively warn residents, in what direction the residents would be evacuated, and whether a city faces threats that would make evacuation necessary.

"Is there a hazard that has some credibility?" Beriwal asks, adding that a city like Phoenix probably would never face a flood or similar hazard that would require evacuation of the entire city.

Furthermore, feasibility has to be taken into account. "Can L.A. actually evacuate? The answer might be no."

"Evacuating all of Los Angeles is extreme," Mileti agrees. "Where would they go? Las Vegas?"

Experts also take issue with the assigning of grades, for most of the same reasons. Mileti says that rating cities on their roads and the number of cars that would be on them in a disaster didn't make sense, because it doesn't take into account what plans are in place. A city may have great roads without too many cars to clog them, but might still be a royal mess in an evacuation scenario because of a lack of planning, whereas a place with a "crummy" road system might do very well, because a detailed plan is in place.

Miami, for example, got a failing grade and was near the bottom of the AHUA's list, yet Florida's cities are well known for their excellent evacuation plans, largely because they're forced to evacuate periodically.

Comparing cities to other cities makes even less sense to Crawford. "One size does not fit all. It's always dangerous to generalize, and I think that the larger question of whether or not all cities need a full evacuation plan is something that needs to be discussed."

Finally, the recommendations cited by the Chicago paper were soundly questioned. Beriwal concedes that more highways might be part of the solution, though planning is "a whole lot easier and cheaper to implement than trying to build more highways."

For his part, Cohen notes that our nation's highway system has not kept pace with growth, pointing out that highway capacity has grown only 3% over recent years, while the time Americans spend driving has increased by 67%.

"We do believe that concrete and asphalt is part of the solution," he says. "Many things that are helpful for evacuation are helpful for our daily lives."

Now if he can only tell us how to evacuate Los Angeles over those nice new highways after they've been broken up by an earthquake.