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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what makes you think they arent used?? lots of public transporation is available to get residents to shelters
the biggest hindrance to public transport is people. people want to evacuate with suitcases; pets; family heirlooms/momentos. public transit cant accomodate that, at least not in a way that makes busses more effective than cars.
saying you want to evacuate asap online and actually evacuating through any means necessary often are clashing portrayals of action
It is in developed countries. We have emergency train and bus evacuation schedules in the Netherlands in case floods happen.
Public transit is usually localized, not regional. And because of Florida’s geography there is no fast way to get vehicles there other than planes. Amtrak has limited capacity, as there are only so many trains close enough to send, limited tracks create bottlenecks especially because Amtrak utilizes freight tracks and it’s also important to keep flow of good and materials in. Planes were used until the shut airports.
You are vastly overestimating just how many people they could realistically evacuate with just those. All of them combined in the evacuation areas wouldn’t even make a small dent in the number of people who need to be evacuated. And they’re going to be bogged down just as much as all the cars that are trying to leave.
If you live in Florida odds are you have a car which would be faster and more efficient means to evacuate.
We have busses and trains but there not a massive flood of people trying to leave that their cars can’t take them.
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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.
Because having your car with you gives you a place to live when your home is destroyed?
It is used extensively, for transport to evacuation shelters. People don’t need to evacuate 500 miles for a hurricane to be safe. They just drive to faraway places for convenience reasons or out of anxiety, to avoid spending an uncomfortable boring day or two in an emergency shelter.
And lots of people evacuate via commercial flights.
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