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 public transportation? IF, and that’s a big IF, a city has public transportation. It’s very local with light rail, CNG buses, trollies, or rarely local only trains.
None of these have the range to transport masses anywhere. There is nothing between towns and states other than the highway.
Which means you’d have to hire buses with range to transport people. That takes time and money that no one has budgeted for.
In American capitalism (read poorly regulated capitalism) no one can afford to plan for contingencies. That is considered waste and govt mismanagement.
Busses are absolutely used for evacuation, but has limitations because people need to bring more than just themselves. Passenger interstate rail does not have very much capacity and is probably not worthwhile to coordinate.
As well, people who do own cars want to bring those cars with them. If they leave them behind, they are likely going to be complete losses and may not be covered by insurance. So just making busses and rail available is not going to move people from cars to those options. It just provides an option for those without cars.
Things like providing water and food can be quickly arranged for a surprise emergency. But you can’t quickly build a new train line for an emergency. Public transit takes planning and years of infrastructure. So the idea that politics doesn’t matter because the government does things it normally wouldn’t like provide food doesn’t work here. You can temporarily do an out of character thing and support a food giveaway just this once, but “just this once” doesn’t work for turning around years of not wanting public transit infrastructure.
It is used, but public transportation still has it’s limits. Even if you’re giving free rides and directing everything outbound, you can still only fit so many passengers in a train car or a bus. And you only have so many roads & tracks. In fact “sending more trains” could actually make the situation worse by causing traffic jams.
Also, in relation to a hurricane, air travel is usually suspeded because it’s extreemly dangerous to fly in those conditions, even before the storm actually gets there.
There are good answers here, but one I still haven’t seen: people panic and want all to evacuate as soon as possible. One thing is getting people to work every morning when everybody knows the right time to leave, when there is traffic, not everybody goes at the same time, people work in different places, some don’t move. One other thing is getting everybody out all together from the same starting point. Things get clogged, and it’s not that adding 10 trains multiplies tenfold the people moved, because if you have ever seen an overcrowded metro platform, you know that trains take ages to leave. Add the fear of losing your only ride and that panic of what’s happening and you have all the trains/buses stopped at the station waiting for people to stop killing each other for a spot on the train. That’s why usually if it’s forecast that people would clog the public transport it gets stopped, even for emergencies.
As an example, at the start of COVID in Italy, when the country was still open, rumors spread that they would have locked down the first regions where COVID was spreading. Milan was inside one of these regions, and at about 7pm everyone who didn’t want to get locked in a city went to the main station to take a train out. There were so many people the trains were delayed by hours, and only by dawn the station cleared. They also had to send the military at one point to try to manage the situation. And the number of people were less than the people that pass from that station on a normal morning, but they arrived all together and wanted to leave as soon as possible, clogging everything.
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Public transportation during regular times have stops are scattered around the city. What would they do in an evacuation, go door to door?
Also, as other have stated, you get lots of people with lots of stuff so the buses would fill up pretty quickly
There aren’t really public transportation networks in the US. At least not in any efficient manner or meaningful capacity. We built a car only country – no car or can’t drive you don’t count.
It won’t work in Florida because we don’t have a robust and effective public transportation system. On a regular day, getting to work would take me 90 minutes to travel 10 miles to my office (two buses, with up to a 20 minute wait if they are on time). This would completely break down in a situation where the system is even slightly stressed.
The current governor has also weakened public transportation system, instead shoveling highway and construction contracts to his donors. I guess the idea is to make public transportation so horrible that a massive interchange in Fruitville makes sense.
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