Hurricane Ivan post-evacuation article

[LaPlaceFF]

Close call pushes state to try to ease evacuation
But B.R. bottleneck looms as formidable obstacle
Monday, November 29, 2004
By Jan Moller
Capital bureau

BATON ROUGE -- The 2004 hurricane season, which officially ends Tuesday, is likely to be remembered in Louisiana not for high winds but for long waits.

State evacuation plans for Hurricane Ivan, fashioned after Hurricane Georges in 1998, proved inadequate in mid-September as thousands of motorists were stranded for up to 12 hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic en route to Baton Rouge and beyond from New Orleans.

State emergency officials initially proclaimed the evacuation a huge success, but they amended that assessment after hearing numerous complaints from those stuck in the traffic.

Since late September, state officials have been working on an "after-action review" ordered by Gov. Kathleen Blanco in an attempt to speed up future evacuations. The results are expected to be unveiled Thursday, when emergency officials are scheduled to testify before the Senate Select Committee on Homeland Security about future evacuation plans.

Ivan "gave us a good test case to test some of our evacuation operations, and it demonstrated that we still have some problems in that particular area," said state climatologist Barry Keim of Louisiana State University.

In particular, Ivan provided the first trial of a contraflow traffic plan in which all Interstate 10 lanes were opened to westbound traffic between Kenner and LaPlace. Cars in the normal westbound lines were routed to Interstate 55, while those traveling west in the eastbound lanes continued toward Baton Rouge.

Many of those routed north on I-55 were intent on heading west, causing a bottleneck to develop in Hammond at the intersection of Interstates 12 and 55. "We just sent them in a big loop, from 10 to 55 to 12 back to 10," said Department of Transportation and Development spokesman Mark Lambert. "We know we need to control the traffic better. We need to anticipate."

Another major bottleneck occurred in Baton Rouge, where I-12 joins I-10 westbound, and five lanes of traffic merge into two.

Lambert said last week that agency officials are still reviewing several options for improving contraflow before sending specific recommendations to the governor.

"We need to do a better job of signage and education and letting people know there are more ways than the interstate to get out of New Orleans," Lambert said. "We're also looking at several different versions of contraflow right now, and we're trying to look at which version . . . makes the best sense and which one is going to help the most."

One option under consideration is to extend contraflow all the way to Baton Rouge. But Lambert said that might not solve the major problem.

"The core problem is you've got a huge logjam in Baton Rouge, and getting people to that logjam quicker . . . is not necessarily going to improve traffic flow," Lambert said. "We're looking at three (to) four different scenarios involving traffic patterns in New Orleans and Baton Rouge."

Louisiana State Police spokesman Lt. Lawrence McLeary said traffic jams are inevitable during an evacuation, no matter what changes are ultimately made, because freeways are not designed to accommodate nearly everyone leaving at once. "You're not going to remove the bottleneck," McLeary said. "You're just going to move it to a different place."