Although evacuation planning and operations have long been topics of critical significance to the hazards preparedness and response community, only in the past several years have they emerged to become important issues among transportation professionals. The increased level of interest has been the result of several recent high-profile evacuations and the realization that, in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the potential need to rapidly evacuate large populations is perhaps greater than it has ever been. This paper is the first in a two-part series that reviews transportation engineering aspects of hurricane evacuations, addressing policies and practices for transportation system planning, preparedness, and response. (Part II focuses on traffic operations, management, and control.) Results of a survey of state evacuation practices are presented, including command and control strategies, types of evacuations used, and implementation and enforcement criteria. Evacuation modeling methods are ...

Over the past 20 years the coastal population of the southeastern United States that is vulnerable to hurricanes has increased significantly. Much of the recent planning and construction of infrastructure in these regions has taken place during a two-decade lull in hurricane activity. It is now apparent that these areas are not all suitably equipped to deal with the threat of severe hurricanes. As a result, a significant percentage of the coastal population is forced to evacuate under the threat of major hurricanes. This has been demonstrated recently during Hurricane Floyd in 1999 and during Hurricane Georges in 1998. One method suggested to meet the need to evacuate large numbers of people in a rapid and efficient manner is to contraflow segments of interstate freeway. Under contraflow operation, some or all inbound lanes of a freeway are used for outbound evacuation. While the concept is simple, implementation is complex. This paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of contraflow operation on ...

This paper is the second in a two-part series reviewing highway transportation aspects of hurricane evacuations. While the first focused on transportation-related policies and practices for evacuation planning, preparedness, and response, this paper summarizes the state of current practice from the perspective of evacuation traffic operations, management, and control. Results of a survey of state evacuation practices are presented, concentrating on design and operational aspects of contraflow evacuations and the use of intelligent transportation systems for evacuation management. Means of dissemination of information to travelers/evacuees are addressed, along with strategies for promotion of general public awareness of evacuation plans and procedures. Management of poststorm reentry into evacuated areas and planning and contracting issues regarding construction activities on evacuation routes during the hurricane season are also considered. Although this study focused on issues pertaining to hurricane eva...

Reversible roadways have been used throughout the world to mitigate the effects of congestion and optimize roadway performance for more than 70 years. They have been applied on a variety of roadway types using many different methods of control to address an assortment of needs, including the movement of unbalanced directional traffic associated peak commuter periods, emergency evacuations, roadway construction work zones, and other major gatherings and events. Despite the long and varied history of reversible roadways there are a limited amount of established guidelines and standards to guide their planning, design, and operation. To overcome this lack of information the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) sponsored a project to investigate and document reversible roadway practices to better understand the conditions that warrant their use, their impacts on safety, operations, and the environment, and their design and implementation requirements. This paper builds upon the findings of NC...

This project was motivated by recent research that has advocated the need for a better understanding of and planning for evacuations of residential subdivisions under threat from wildfires. Prior work has suggested that the density of housing units and ineffective evacuation routing and egress may have contributed to fatalities in subdivisions in which residents were unable to evacuate when the need arose. To evaluate the effects of development density and street network layout, this study utilized simulation to represent and evaluate various evacuation scenarios at the neighborhood level under ranges of housing density and threat urgency. The results of this study illustrate the relationships between the traffic that can be accommodated by a roadway network; the location and number of egress points; and the time during which vehicles enter and exit the network. Most significantly, it showed how changes in traffic volume need to be accompanied by corresponding increases or decreases in time and/or egress ...