Avoiding Gridlock After Terrorist Attacks

By Gregory Mone Posted 07.05.2007 at 12:31 pm 2 Comments

A terrorist attack or unforeseen natural disaster could unleash all sorts of madness on a major metropolitan area – and traffic is hardly a minor concern. Hundreds of thousands of people piling into their cars and speeding out of town at once could lead to some serious gridlock. Even a brief blackout can cause traffic migraines, as evidenced by the recent electrical outage in New York City. But University of Arizona engineer Yi-Chiang Chu is developing a software package that could smooth out the evacuation process. Working from real-time data collected by city and state transportation departments, the software suggests the best options for re-routing the cars and ensuring that everyone can get out of town as quickly as possible.—Gregory Mone

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2 Comments

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popsci

07/05/07 at 7:05 pm

Here on Long Island we don't needs a terrorist attack or unforeseen natural disaster to get gridlock. There is a reason that the Long Island Expressway is referred to as being the worlds longest parking lot.

When a terrorist attack or unforeseen natural disaster hits this area there is no way in hell you could get the millions of people that live here off the island quickly. It can be a pain getting out of here on a normal day.

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popsci

07/05/07 at 8:02 pm

I don't trust government to act in my best interest in the event of a disaster. They're more likely to try to funnel traffic onto an overloaded "evacuation" route than to let traffic disperse. Experienced this leaving Independence Day fireworks this week. On Thanksgiving major highways tend to overload before the minor farm to market roads here in the North Dallas suburbs. Large reservoirs block some of the back roads, but, with practice, the minor roads seem to be the way to go when many people are leaving town at the same time.

Escape from Houston
http://engineer2entrepreneur.typepad.com/engineer2entrepreneur/2005/09/hurricane_rita_.html
http://www.slate.com/id/2126827/