Evacuation by train
Otis White of Governing magazine has a piece in the free portion of the New York Times op-ed section about how high-speed rail could be useful in an evacuation:
If local and federal authorities had worked with Amtrak to make better use of its trains in New Orleans, thousands could have been evacuated before the worst of Katrina hit. And if Houston had gone ahead with earlier proposals to develop high-speed rail links, the same might have been true there.
After watching video of people stuck at the Superdome and Convention Center in New Orleans and on the highways of Houston, this sounds like a good idea. After all, who wouldn't be in favor of another way out of town?
The reason this logic is faulty for the same reason that evacuation by airlift is unfeasable. Compared to the number of people who take buses, trains and cars as commuters every day, the number of people who travel between cities is very, very small. At most, a viable intercity rail system would evacuate a few thousand people per day, assuming that evacuees can make it to the downtown train station on foot, since buses and cabs would be better utilized getting people out of town, not around it.
Commuter rail is a better option in evacuation situations because it has the rolling stock and redundancy to move large numbers of people from multiple convenient points. Since nearly all commuter lines hook up with intercity freight and passenger lines, they could move many more people out of harm's way from all over a city, clearing the roads to some extent.
This is, of course, predicated on the existence of evacuation plans that make it clear where and when to show up for a bus or train out of town.
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rj3 | 09:43 AM |
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On the other hand, didn't The Pennsylvania Railroad move close to 200,000 people through each of Pennsylvania Station in New York and Union Station in D.C. on Christmas of 1944? The problem might rest with having sufficient rolling stock rather than with the type of carrier.
Well, yeah. Intercity and commuter rail are essentially the same type of carrier when compared with road or air. Commuter trains, however, will have more rolling stock closer to where it can be used, more locations within the city for easy access and (usually) more redundancy in the case of blocked routes out of town. Besides, I bet the LIRR&MNRR predecessors moved out more people from Penn and Grand Central on Christmas of 1944.
