Katrina fall-out

On 2005-09-01, john smith wrote:
Dylan Smith wrote:
It would have to be 'whatever' because tens of thousands of New Orleans
residents DO NOT own cars and there aren't enough buses to go around.

100 city buses each carrying 75 people 200 miles inland could relocate
65,000 people in three days, distributing them so as not to cause an
undue burden on any one geographic are and resources.

The math doesn't work out for that.
The roads were jam packed leaving New Orleans, with traffic moving very
slowly. 80% of the population was already in their cars, and the
freeways were choked.
A contraflow was set up on major routes, so the return trip
would have had to have been made on more minor routes. Average speeds
for the city buses would have been 15 mph at best from sitting in
traffic for hours followed by a relatively slow run (city buses don't
tend to have a particularly high speed due to their normal usage
patterns) once they were in the clear.

What 100 city buses could do in a non-emergency situation when the
freeways had normal traffic flows is totally irrelevant to what they can
do when every major route is running at parking lot speeds.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
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"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"