I know the easy answer is politics but it has to be more complicated that that because evacuations tend to involve other things that go against certain politics (like free food and open shelters). And even though somewhere like Florida doesn’t have tons of public buses, it would be logistically relatively easy to redirect the ones they do have plus school buses and private buses that are currently in disuse. Or for Amtrak to send extra trains down there, like cities do for sporting events. I’m seeing a lot of people online who seem like they’d be willing to jump on the first train/bus/plane to literally anywhere. What’s the logic in not making that more available as an option?
I’m using the US but I do feel like it’s not something you see even in general, at least not as much as expected.
Are there more complex reasons that I’m not considering?
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The short answer is lack of advanced planning.
Many groups that don’t traditionally work together would need to have a coordinated plan of when evacuation by transit would start, where buses would load, where would they go, what services would be available to people dropped in an unfamiliar city with no further transportation, how would reclassifying transit drivers as essential workers evacuating last be handled, etc. That plan would also need to be public knowledge so that people would know how to use it. Planning for how to use transit to evacuate needs to happen while the sun is shining.
New Orleans lost most of its buses because they were parked in low lying yards when Katrina hit, while thousands were desperate for a way out of the city. The answer of put people on those buses and drive them out of the city seems obvious, but requires entrenched bureaucracies to work quickly to do something they don’t normally do.
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