The biggie for now has to do with evacuating a giant city like Houston--and that massive traffic jam we all saw last week. It turns out that the region's evacuation plan made no provision for running "contraflow" lanes on the highway. That's a bit odd, because most cities in hurricane-prone spots do have plans in place for reversing highway lanes in order to make both lanes head out of town.
Houston officials, however, apparently believed that their city's complex web of freeways was too complicated to go contraflow. So when they did reverse some lanes to get evacuees moving, it was all improv.
Today's Houston Chronicle reports:
Once it became apparent that something had to change to get people moving at the height of the evacuation, the city and county asked about 2:30 a.m. Thursday for the state to open the lanes.
With no regional or state plan in place, officials scrambled to make it happen.
First, they had to determine how and where to redirect traffic. Then they had to make sure it was safe. About 10 hours later, with a long, snaking line of idling evacuees waiting, southbound lanes on I-45 were reversed. Contraflow on I-10 opened later. TxDOT looked at opening both sides of U.S. 290, but decided it would be impractical because the highway has so many entry points.
