“Lessons From Katrina: What A Major Disaster

“Lessons From Katrina: What A Major Disaster Can Teach Transportation Planners” is a new paper from Todd Litman, director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute in Victoria, British Columbia. “From a transport planning perspective, the greatest mistake in New Orleans was the lack of a detailed action plan to dispatch buses for evacuating transit-dependent residents,” Litman writes. “Such a plan would include an inventory of all available buses and essential staff, and pre-established procedures to deploy buses when an evacuation order is announced.” “The transportation problems exposed by Hurricane Katrina are simply an extreme example of the day-to-day problems that non-drivers face in many communities, due to inadequate and poorly integrated public transportation services,” Litman says. He observes, “It would be helpful for all transportation professionals to spend at least two weeks each year without driving so they can directly experience the non-automobile transportation system that they help create.” The paper is available at www.vtpi.org/katrina.pdf.