Rail Could Have Aided Evacuations
Too few buses didn't work for New Orleans, and too many cars didn't work for Houston. Rail is the third way.
In contrast to knee-jerk calls for expanding highways or filling the roads with free cars in order to evacuate people during extremely rare disasters, Otis White advocates adding the type of transportation that will not pollute cities or congest city streets - passenger rail. The best distances for high speed rail travel, 100 - 500 miles, would have taken Houston and New Orleans' citizens well out of harm's way. "If the failures of New Orleans and the gridlock of Houston show anything, it's that we urgently need a third way out of cities, something other than flying or driving. Fortunately, there is such a way: passenger rail."
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And what about the bike?
One reason a person might not take the train when fleeing an impending disaster such as a hurricane might be the difficulty of bringing one's pets or other belongings not easily folded into a suitcase. And then there's the problem of getting to the train station with whatever you might be bringing--is there sufficient public transportation within cities to do the job?
No, when one's car is sitting in the driveway, most people will load it up and head for the highway. The clot of automobiles doesn't manifest itself until we reach the freeway onramp, generally, and by then it's long past being too late.
What really forms the "third way" is not the train (though I would love it to do so) but the bicycle. It can carry a person where no car can go after all, and when the bike can't carry you, you can carry the bike. It sits at the ready in one's garage or driveway, and fully loaded (with a trailer for good measure) can carry almost as much as a car.
What's lacking is infrastructure for the bicycle. While it may be possible to get around downtown fairly easily in many North American cities, they make the "middle distance" very unappealing. Getting beyond city limits is commonly a dangerous and futile effort, requiring the crossing of major highways, bodies of water, or other obstacles to the narrow line a cyclist takes.
And worse, unlike in many European countries, most trains and other public transportation will not allow a bicycle to "roll on, roll off" without major hassles (remove the pedals, turn the handlebars, pack the whole thing in a cardboard box).
What Katrina and Rita ought to be suggesting to us is the need for rational and equal treatment of cyclists on a per-dollar basis: spend a dollar on a motorist, spend one on a cyclist. Hmm. Wouldn't that be "fair and balanced?"
Because it's past time to ban automobile advertising.