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Be Flexible – In retrospect, SA d’Economie Mixte des Transports Publics de Voyageurs de l’Agglomeration Toulousaine management said they had learned the following lessons: “Be flexible—be prepared to change your plans.”
Synthesis of Transit Practice 27: Emergency Preparedness for Transit Terrorism
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“Conduct Transportation System Assessments Periodically and include temporary system conditions, such as construction activity.”
Compendium: Graduate Student Papers on Advanced Surface Transportation Systems: Application of ITS Technology to Hurricane Evacuation Routes
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“Coordinate Current Work Zone Activities – Current work zone activities must be coordinated so they do not all impact traffic at the same time for parallel routes in case of a terrorist incident or other incident with no forewarning.”
Disaster Response and Evacuation User Service: An Addendum to the ITS Program Plan
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Document Resources Assigned – “From the bottom, leaders at the tactical level established incident command system, exercised command, and began documenting resources assigned when no guidance was available.”
Southern California Firestorm 2003: Report for the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center
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Establish the Unified Command Quickly – “Limitations of current communications technology during a large incident continue to be reviewed. The frequent face-to-face meetings held in the command center helped address the problems and further confirmed the importance of establishing a unified command quickly.”
I-95 Shutdown: Coordinating Transportation and Emergency Response
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Expect Chaos – “People will tend to stay until the last minute. People tend to evacuate whenever another group is told to evacuate. People will not listen if they perceive it will not improve their safety. Telling some to shelter and asking others to leave has not worked in the past. In the case of an incident of mass destruction, even thought it may affect a small part of the community, it could spark panic, traffic jams and increase the exposure risk for everyone.”
Homeland Response, “Evacuation: What We Can Learn—and Cannot Learn—from Hurricanes”
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Go with the Flow – “Plans need to be based on where the roads go. Once people start moving they will move. Need to figure out how to communicate, find a point where they can be taken off the road and decontaminated in case of an incident.”
Homeland Response, “Evacuation: What We Can Learn—and Cannot Learn—from Hurricanes”
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Identify Incidents Early —“[Develop] methods and strategies to maximize the efficiency of detecting, responding to and clearing incidents on evacuation routes.”
Reverse Lane Standards and ITS Strategies Southeast United States Hurricane Study: Technical Memorandum Number 1: Final Report
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Know Where You Are Going and How to Get There – “A key to rapidly moving people out of an area is to know how far they need to go, speed them to the safety perimeter and provide shelters once they get there. New Orleans has approximately 25 percent of the population without cars and moving the 100,000 even with a three day warring is a chore. They have looked at mass transit, school buses and trains to move people.”
Homeland Response, “Evacuation: What We Can Learn—and Cannot Learn—from Hurricanes”
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Overcome the Need to Take Action without Planning – “The extreme conditions made everyone feel a sense of urgency to commit and take action. It was even more important under those circumstances to do a proper and deliberate size-up and make contingency plans.
It was very difficult to maintain situation awareness of the fire activity as it moved through urban areas and split into multiple heads. Air resources were most effective to overcome this problem.”
Southern California Firestorm 2003: Report for the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center
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“Prepare for Emergencies in Advance to Make Day-of-Event Decisions Easier – Because the Ohio Turnpike was well prepared for a power outage, managers were able to oversee seamless conversion to backup power systems with few decisions that deviated from protocol. In contrast, the Road Commission for Oakland County staff encountered the prospect of a countywide signal outage for the first time during the blackout. They had to make decisions about which intersections were most important to try to maintain with backup power and how to check signals throughout the county as power was restored.”
Effects of Catastrophic Events on Transportation System Management and Operations: August 2003 Northeast Blackout Great Lakes Region
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Remember Pets and/or Livestock Need to Be Evacuated or People Assured of Their Evacuations
Reno/Tahoe Blog (online Web journal), “Pleasant Valley Fire”
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“Set Your Priorities as Quickly as Possible – Once they learned more about the event, they were better able to respond to it. Most set their priority to be public safety and, as one interviewee described, traffic was secondary for the first couple of hours.
During the evacuation of the New York City subway system, operators identified passengers with special needs. In some cases, these passengers, such as two pregnant women, stayed in the cars until medical help arrived. In another instance, a passenger was provided special assistance—New York City Transit crews carried a wheelchair-bound passenger from a train stuck on a bridge to the roadway below. All agreed that [women], children, the elderly, and the sick should board the buses and ferries first.”
Effects of Catastrophic Events on Transportation System Management and Operations: August 2003 Northeast Blackout New York City
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Understand the Limits of Shelter in Place – “Sheltering or evacuation depend on the nature of the incident and the time duration of the incident—[with] minutes (to respond to the incident), maybe shelter [-in-place]—[with] hours maybe evacuate.”
Homeland Response, “Evacuation: What We Can Learn—and Cannot Learn—from Hurricanes”
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“Understand the Options Available in Your Transit System – Because of the heavy use of transit in the region and its dependence on electricity, the blackout obviously had a major effect on the public transportation systems. Since the events on September 11, people became accustomed to using the ferries. Transit managers had to decide if they should shift everyone over to ferries or establish an alternative bus operation in conjunction with the ferries. They decided that they had to utilize the capacity of both modes.
The closing of the Port Authority Bus Terminal caused a major disruption. Commuters waiting for buses were forced to evacuate the building and move onto the surrounding streets. To alleviate as much congestion and confusion as possible, managers from New Jersey Transit decided on a load-and-go solution. As buses entered the bus terminal area, commuters were loaded onto buses regardless of their final destination. The buses went to a staging area that was set up at the Meadowlands. At that location, commuters would then board buses to reach their final destination. Similarly, passengers disembarking from the ferries in New Jersey were met by buses that took them to the Meadowlands.
New Jersey Transit managers also had to deal with loss of the light rail system. They created a bus bridge and used private carriers with whom they already have signed memoranda of understanding.
Early in the blackout, many decisions concerning re-routing within the New York City Transit Bus were handled at the local division level. When communications was restored within the agency, managers in the main office provided more input on routing.
Once they decided that the blackout would last more than 30 minutes, they began following established policies to react to the situation. They issued a directive for all trains to discharge passengers and secure the train if it was in a station and to begin the process of evacuating those not in a station.”
Effects of Catastrophic Events on Transportation System Management and Operations: August 2003 Northeast Blackout New York City
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“Use Equipment and Personnel Resource Lists to keep tabs on available equipment and personnel and update the lists in real time.”
Compendium: Graduate Student Papers on Advanced Surface Transportation Systems: Application of ITS Technology to Hurricane Evacuation Routes
