Evacuations with cars are a bottleneck ( lemmy.world )

A highway camera photo shows traffic in FortMcMurray jammed in the southbound lane of Highway 63 on the north side of the Athabasca River. The image was captured at 3:11 p.m. MT, about an hour after an evacuation order was issued for four neighbourhoods. (511 Alberta)

Evacuation order issued as wildfire threatening Fort McMurray draws closer https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-wildfire-grande-prairie-fort-mcmurray-1.7203695

Jake_Farm ,
@Jake_Farm@sopuli.xyz avatar

Public transit shuts down in emergencies. What is even the point of this complaint?

usualsuspect191 ,

Plus, you tend to need to carry a lot of stuff when evacuating. My photo albums alone are too heavy to cart around for any meaningful distance, never mind spare clothing etc.

biddy ,

In what scenario would you bring photo albums when evacuating? If it's non-serious then you can come back, it's serious then you should have higher priorities.

eatCasserole ,

What do people who don't own cars do in this scenario?

ICastFist ,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

In other countries, where motorcycles are common, you'd see a good portion of them zig-zagging past the mostly stopped cars. While carry capacity is severely limited, compared to a car, it's still better than nothing.

Now, people without any means of transportation are pretty much fucked, because to evacuate, you need time to pack some of your shit and some way to transport it with you. Depending on the event, you'd have to choose between GTFO ASAP or packing the most you can. Even if a government provided buses for people without cars, how long would it take for everyone to finish packing their stuff inside and getting in before it's too late?

eatCasserole ,

This reminds me of watching a Vietnamese YouTuber talking about getting through a major typhoon. I don't think they explained how the buses were organized, but there were buses.

dumblederp ,

I'd cycle and camp. I reckon I could cover 50-100km a day on a bike, possibly more if motivated by emergency. 20km city riding takes me an hour usually.

eatCasserole ,

I almost have the proper gear for this... I'm sure I could make it work in an emergency. A good contingency idea. I think I've done about 80k in a day before, and it wasn't particularly strenuous... you can cover a lot of ground on a bike if you just keep going.

dlpkl ,

Not live there. I'm not joking, if you live in Northern Canada the first thing you'll save up for is a car, or you'll know people who own a car.

eatCasserole ,

It's not just remote places that can get evacuated.

I don't live in the north, don't own a car, and don't worry about it, but if something catastrophic were to happen here, I hope there would be options for the many non-car-having people.

orbitz ,

I had to check Google maps to make sure but the next closest city appears to be about 300kms south (Athabasca, unless Lac La Biche is closer), even with public transit they aren't getting anywhere else. There's nothing in so much of Northern Canada you're screwed for mobility without a vehicle.

BossDj ,

The article expressed that the fire was lower risk, slow moving. Nobody was hurt. Seems like the evacuation was a success. Hopefully those cars are packed full with all the irreplaceable items and memories from their homes as well as their pets.

I've seen evacuations utilize additional lanes in the direction of flow. Maybe they would have if the situation were more urgent. It looks like nobody thought that was necessary.

Fuck cars and car centric lifestyle, but this is one situation where any alternative seems less efficient

Hotspur ,

I was leaving on a car trip a few years back, and unbeknownst to me, about 20miles up the road, a huge thunderstorm had brought down some trees and power lines, blocking one part of the northbound highway, during early rush hour. We got stuck for 3 hours trying to get past it. No matter which side road, turn, whatever we took, it was jammed. We waited for an hour on one small side road only to get sent back because a line was down at an intersection. This wasn’t a major natural disaster, things went back to normal in a couple hours. But it really drove home to me how pointless it would be relying on escaping/evacuating from a real disaster if you didn’t get out early. I don’t say this to suggest that people shouldn’t follow evacuation orders, they absolutely should; an evacuation order is early warning. I’m saying this to suggest that none of us should assume that we’ll just be able to get out in an emergency, particularly in a car. It just doesn’t take that many people on the road to completely seize the system.

eatCasserole ,

This makes me think of movies, the scenes when like Godzilla or the stay puft marshmallow man or something shows up and everyone just gets out of their cars and runs away on foot. Movies are silly but in a panic scenario the car could easily become more of a hindrance than anything.

Hotspur ,

Yeah absolutely. This is one of the things that movies seem to get right. Also in post apocalyptic disaster type movies, you often see freeways with just huge empty traffic pileups.

AA5B ,

We go to Cape Cod every year, and this has really hit me each time. The Cape is a good sized peninsula, but connected to the mainland by only two bridges. It’s already enough of a bottleneck to be backed up by tens of miles on summer weekends: an actual evacuation attempt would be so much worse

Shore Traffic is bad no matter where you go, but I’ve never seen any as bad as Cape Cod

Hotspur ,

Oh yeah, I’ll bet. It hasn’t happened as far as I know, but that’s the kind of situation where things like really strong storm surge or tsunamis would be pretty rough to evacuate from. I assume there are some ferry’s, maybe the region could mobilize a personal craft flotilla for a evac rescue, like dunkirk…

AA5B ,

That would be an adventure!

  • there’s a train, but summer only and might be once a day so won’t help much
  • there’s a small airport, but I Don’t know if there is any scheduled service, so won’t help much
  • yep, several ferries but might be summer, I don’t know. That would help a little if they’re running

Yeah, I can picture hundreds of small boats

originalucifer ,
@originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com avatar

notice the empty highways. the emergency personnel arent trained to reverse highways in this area, which is a common thing in certain places

also; fuck cars

ramble81 ,

Yeah on the Texas gulf coast they open up the shoulder into an additional lane and switch direction of the opposite side giving anywhere from 6-8 lanes. This lets them evacuate places even like Houston pretty quickly

BossDj ,

Which leads me to believe that this area is actually trained to reverse lanes, but there was no urgency with this slow moving fire.

WalrusDragonOnABike ,

"Pretty quickly" is still like 5mph maybe during peak evacuation traffic from a major hurricane. Smaller hurricanes aren't a problem because so many people choose to stay after horrible experiences trying to evacuate before: safer to stay home than be stranded on i10.

somethingsnappy ,

Not criticizing, but isn't it generally though that more lanes doesn't equal less traffic, or is a huge surge like am evacuation different?

calcopiritus ,

More lanes == less traffic is wrong due to induced demand. In an evacuation, however, the demand is already at its maximum. What you want is more throughput to get the people out.

Having less lanes won't make people choose going on train or bus instead. Chances are that the busses and trains are already full.

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