Managing Pedestrians During Evacuation of Metropolitan Areas

Quality Assurance Statement

This material is based upon work supported by the Federal Highway Administration under Contract Number DTFH61-01-C-00182. The Federal Highway Administration provides high-quality information to serve Government, industry, and the public in a manner that promotes public understanding. Standards and policies are used to ensure and maximize the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of its information. FHWA periodically reviews quality issues and adjusts its programs and processes to ensure continuous quality improvement. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Highway Administration.

Managing Pedestrians During
Evacuation Of Metropolitan Areas

Publication No. FHWA-HOP-07-066

March 2007

Prepared by

Center for Human Performance and Safety

Patricia A. Bolton
1100 Dexter Ave N.
Seattle, WA 98109

Prepared for

Federal Highway Administration
U.S. Department of Transportation|
Washington, DC 20590

U.S. Department of Transportation logo

Department of Transportation
Federal Highway Administration

March 2007

Dear Colleague,

Emergencies can occur at any time, any place. We all need to be prepared to take immediate actions to move out of harm’s way quickly from wherever we are at the time. The September 11(or 9/11), 2001, attacks on the high-profile workplaces of the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City and the Pentagon in the Washington, D.C. area, made real the impact of an unexpected, or “no-notice,” event in a metropolitan setting. News coverage of the events of 9/11 showed thousands of people leaving the area of the WTC on foot. The evacuation from the borough of Manhattan included not only the typical traffic congestion expected in an evacuation in the United States, but thousands of pedestrians moving along with, or among, the vehicles. However, unexpected emergencies causing people to evacuate an area can result from transportation accidents, hazardous materials releases, earthquakes, flash flooding and other natural and man-made causes.

When a large-scale, damaging event has occurred or the imminent threat of one has become known, transportation agencies, working with public safety and emergency management officials, focus on two traditional, principal objectives:

Minimize the time it takes to get an adequate force of emergency responders to the scene where they can help victims, provide assessments, and control access.
Maximize the proportion of the population moved away from the hazardous area without being subjected to other risks (e.g., traffic accidents; prolonged exposure to the danger).

Evidence that large numbers of pedestrians may be part of an evacuation raised questions within the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) about what actions are needed to manage pedestrian traffic during metropolitan evacuations and what FHWA can contribute in this area to ensure safe and effective movement of pedestrians while minimizing their impact on vehicular movement. This study resulted from these inquiries.

This document is one of a series of publications that FHWA has been producing to aid local, State and Federal authorities in designing evacuation and other types of emergency transportation operations plans. While transportation authorities have responsibility for developing transportation-specific plans, we expect that they are being done in the construct of the community’s or State’s emergency management planning efforts. We encourage our transportation partners to share information in this and other ETO guides with their emergency managers and first responders and to watch for new publications in the Emergency Transportation Operations series, found on http://www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/opssecurity or the ETO page on https://www.llis.dhs.gov.

Jeffrey F. Paniati
Associate Administrator for Operations
Federal Highway Administration

Technical Report Documentation Page

1. Report No.

FHWA-HOP-07-066

2. Government Accession No.

3. Recipient's Catalog No.

4. Title and Subtitle

Managing Pedestrians during Evacuations of Metropolitan Areas

5. Report Date

March 2007

6. Performing Organization Code

7. Author(s)

Patricia A. Bolton, Ph.D.

8. Performing Organization Report No.

9. Performing Organization Name and Address

Battelle Human Factors Transportation Center

505 King Avenue

Columbus, Ohio 43201

10. Work Unit No. (TRAIS)

11. Contract or Grant No.

DTFH61-01-C00182/BA82

12. Sponsoring Agency Name and Address

Federal Highway Administration

U.S. Department of Transportation

400 Seventh Street, S.W.

Washington, D.C. 20590

13. Type of Report and Period Covered

Final Group

14. Sponsoring Agency Code

HOTO, FHWA

15. Supplementary Notes

Kimberly Vasconez, FHWA Office of Operations, Office of Transportation Operations, Contracting Officer’s Technical Representative (COTR). Work on this document was accomplished through a contract to Battelle.

16. Abstract

The September 11(or 9/11), 2001, attacks on the high-profile workplaces of the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City and the Pentagon in the Washington, D.C. area, made real the impact of an unexpected, or “no-notice,” event in a metropolitan setting. The news coverage of the events of 9/11 showed thousands of people leaving the area of the WTC on foot. The evacuation from the borough of Manhattan included not only the typical traffic congestion expected in an evacuation in the United States, but thousands of pedestrians moving along with, or among, the vehicles.

When a large-scale, damaging event has occurred or the imminent threat of one has become known, transportation agencies working with public safety officials have traditionally had two principal objectives:

Minimize the time it takes to get an adequate force of emergency responders to the scene where they can help victims, provide assessments, and control access.
Maximize the proportion of the population moved away from the hazardous area without being subjected to other risks (e.g., traffic accidents; prolonged exposure to the danger).

17. Key Words

Metropolitan Areas Evacuations; Pedestrian Evacuations; No-notice Evacuations; Transportation planning and operations, Evacuation decision making and behavior; Social and behavioral research on evacuation behavior, Crowd and pedestrian flow modeling; Intelligent Transportation Operations

18. Distribution Statement

No restrictions.

19. Security Classif. (of this report)

Unclassified

20. Security Classif. (of this page)

Unclassified

21. No. of Pages

22. Price

Form DOT F 1700.7 (8-72) Reproduction of completed page authorized

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

1 Introduction