This column has often touched on the role of the transportation management community for incident response. Different considerations of that response have touched on questions about transportation operations centers, first-responder concept of operations, leveraging multiple transportation modes, first-responder credentials and price as a transportation tool, among others raised. Given the stark situation confronting the residents and the responders in the Gulf shore region, it makes sense to revisit some of these issues and ideas.
The role of the TOC
I have not heard much about the role of transportation operations in the aftermath of Katrina. Under normal circumstances, transportation operation certainly isn’t front-page news. Given the human suffering and storm damage, there have been more acute dramas to focus on. Nonetheless, I would like to query the role of the operations center. Was this simply the case that the location of the operations center could not withstand a category 4 hurricane (few could)? Did the loss of power preclude its usefulness? Did any of the traffic operations infrastructure survive? What is the time for recovery? Did these meet the expectation for this category of event?
More interesting becomes the role of transportation operations during the recovery period. While most of the emphasis on incident response has dealt with the time leading up to and around the incident, it now seems that this should be extended to the recovery period. Recent stories have surfaced regarding accidents resulting from military vehicles colliding with vehicles of returning residents. Is there a role for the transportation professional during the transition from disaster site to operational roadways? Is there a component to civil security that transportation fills while an incident is a disaster site?
This is one example where Katrina provides an opportunity to assess the state of the practice and the viability of response for a natural catastrophe.
Transit and other modes
In the case of Katrina the first response involved primarily modes other than vehicular transportation. How these modes play into the concept of operations are made easier to understand when roadways are closed, no gas is available and people are isolated from their vehicles and, more importantly, their livelihoods.
The first mode to come into play in the incident response was clearly air. Helicopter rescue operations effected thousands of rescues in around-the-clock efforts. The New Orleans airport has become the headquarters for one of the largest domestic air lift operations in some time.
One of the first lessons to be drawn from Katrina involves the need to consider evacuation for those who do not own vehicles. An interesting conundrum surfaced. Typically, evacuation management has involved managing the high level of service required by roadways during the period of evacuation. The state of Louisiana’s evacuation plan considered personal vehicles to be the primary means of evacuation and depended on volunteer agencies to provide school or other buses, which did not take place. Eventually the U.S. Department of Transportation made 500 buses available to evacuate the city. Given the circumstances, the need to use transit capabilities will likely become more prominent in the implementation of evacuation schemes in the future.
Transit, and in particular buses, were the only means of completing the full evacuation of the city. To what extent could rail have complemented the evacuation hasn’t really been mentioned. A number of freight lines service New Orleans and have been the quickest to recover (Union Pacific, Burlington Northern, CSX, Kansas City Southern and Canadian National all currently show near full service with a small number of exceptions). Amtrak services, as well as the New Orleans Regional Transportation Authority, have a much tougher recovery ahead of them, but to what extent were they leveraged prior to the incident?
The price of gasoline
Katrina, as a Gulf of Mexico storm, was somewhat unique in how it affected our petroleum refining capacity (hurricanes that hit Florida or North Carolina do not cause the same concerns about critical infrastructure). What impact does the increase in the price of gasoline have on the concept of traffic-management operations? Going forward it increases the percentage of the population requiring evacuation modes other than personal vehicles. This will be greatest in urban (availability of transit) and lower income (priced out of mode by rise in gasoline prices) areas. The price of gasoline has risen over 50% in the last nine months, levels at which some level of mode switch will have to take place.
Will the impact of higher fuel prices be one in which there is some lowering of congestion levels? If so, what does this say about the ability to use price not only for gasoline but also for congestion tolling? Do fuel taxes as a percentage of fuel cost now create more revenue or are they fixed at cents per gallon? Can the increase in revenue from a percentage fuel tax be used toward a first-response fund to pay the upwards of $100 billion from the impact of Katrina?
Credentials and responders
Again, people and goods have been turned away from catastrophic incidents due to a lack of valid credentials. Just as firefighters were turned away from the Pentagon on 9/11, so have responders and citizens been unable to gain entry to many parts of the Gulf Coast. In urban and other areas of the Gulf Coast, only military credentials are accepted and the rest of the population is handicapped in terms of being able to speed the recovery effort. A common credential for public safety and a wide range of first responders would speed the response and mitigate damage. In the future, the issuance of credentials that conform to the Real ID Act and the Federal Information Processing Standard 201 for personal identity verification will provide the type of smart credential able to accomplish this. Tens of millions of Americans (government employees, contractors and first responders) should have these credentials by 2008.
Growing from catastrophe
Catastrophic incidents make stark matters of survival and civilization, and often today they provide challenges and opportunities to rebuild and improve our infrastructure. Oil rig, road and bridge designers, utility and communications infrastructure may need to reconsider the definition of the 100-year storm (why not make something that can withstand 175 mph winds and be submerged in flood waters for weeks?). It also necessarily requires our ability to improve our response. Speed of response always matters. The speed of response ties to mitigating damage to our economy and few things can be more important. Given what we have seen from Tsunamis, terrorists and now Katrina in the last 12 months (even since 9/11) there should be fewer surprises and out of this an ability to respond quickly. Let’s hope that becomes Katrina’s legacy. TME
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