Good post.
Posted on 09/04/2005 9:38:42 PM PDT by logician2u
4 September 2005
Those who fervently wish for car-free cities should take a closer look at New Orleans. The tragedy of New Orleans isn't primarily due to racism or government incompetence, though both played a role. The real cause is automobility -- or more precisely to the lack of it.
"The white people got out," declared the New York Times today. But, as a chart in the Times article makes clear, the people who got out were those with automobiles. Those who stayed, regardless of color, were those who lacked autos.
What made New Orleans more vulnerable to catastrophe than most U.S. cities is its low rate of auto ownership. According to the 2000 Census, nearly a third of New Orleans households do not own an automobile. This compares to less than 10 percent nationwide. There are significant differences by race: 35 percent of black households but only 15 percent of white households do not own an auto. But in the end, it was auto ownership, not race, that made the difference between safety and disaster.
"The evacuation plan was really based on people driving out," an LSU professor told the Times. On Saturday and Sunday, August 27 and 28, when it appeared likely that Hurricane Katrina would strike New Orleans, those people who could simply got in their cars and drove away. The people who didn't have cars were left behind.
Critics of autos love the term "auto dependent." But Katrina proved that the automobile is a liberator. It is those who don't own autos who are dependent -- dependent on the competence of government officials, dependent on charity, dependent on complex and sometimes uncaring institutions.
As shown in the table below, the number of people killed by hurricanes in the U.S. steadily declined during the twentieth century. Economists commonly attribute such declines to increasing wealth. Wealth differences are also credited with the large number of disaster-related deaths in developing nations vs. developed nations. But what makes wealthier societies less vulnerable to natural disaster? There are several factors, but the most important is mobility.
Number of Deaths Caused by Hurricanes in the U.S. 1900-1919 10,000 1920-1939 3,751 1940-1959 1,119 1960-1979 453 1980-1999 57Source: Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory. Number for 1900-1919 is estimated as the exact death toll from 1900 Galveston hurricane is unknown.
People with access to autos can leave an area before it is flooded or hit with hurricanes, tornados, or other storms. When earthquakes or storms strike too suddenly to allow prior evacuation, people with autos can move away from areas that lack food, safe water, or other essentials.
Numerous commentators have legitimately criticized the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other government agencies for failing to foresee the need for evacuation, failing to secure enough buses or other means of evacuation, and failing to get those buses to people who needed evacuation. But people who owned autos didn't need to rely on the competence of government planners to be safe from Katrina and flooding. They were able to save themselves by driving away. Most apparently found refuge with friends or in hotels many miles from the devastation. Meanwhile, those who didn't have autos were forced into high-density, crime-ridden refugee camps such as the Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center.
Rather than help low-income people achieve greater mobility, New Orleans transportation planners decided years ago that their highest priority was to provide heavily subsidized streetcar rides for tourists.
These tourist lines do nothing to help any local residents except for those who happen to own property along the line. The city was not deterred by table 7.2 on page 8 its own analysis of the Desire line showing that each new rider on this line would cost taxpayers more than $20.
About 26,000 low-income families in New Orleans don't own a car. If all the money spent on New Orleans streetcars from 1985 to the present had been spent instead on helping autoless low-income families achieve mobility, the city would have had more than $6,000 for each such family, enough to buy good used cars for all of them. Add the money the city wanted to spend on the Desire Street streetcar and you have enough to buy a brand-new car for every single autoless low-income family -- not a Lexus or BMW, certainly, but a functional source of transportation that would have allowed them to escape the current disaster.
While I don't think that buying low-income families brand-new cars is the best use of our limited transportation resources, it would produce far greater benefits than building rail transit. Studies have found that unskilled workers who have a car are much more likely to have a job and will earn far more than workers who must depend on transit. That is why numerous social service agencies have begun programs aimed at helping low-income families acquire their first car or maintain an existing one.
Yet when I point out the comparative benefits of providing mobility to low-income people vs. building rail transit lines to suburban areas that already enjoy a high degree of mobility, rail advocates often respond, "We can't let poor people have cars. It would cause too much congestion." Yes, as the Soviet Union discovered, poverty is one way to prevent congestion.
New Orleans is in many ways a model for smart growth: high densities, low rates of auto ownership, investments in rail transit. This proved to be its downfall. While the city was vulnerable from being built below sea level, many cities above sea level have proven equally vulnerable to storms and flooding. In the end, New Orleans' people suffered primarily because so many lived without autos, thus making them overly dependent on the competence of government planners.
Please feel free to forward or reprint this article with appropriate citation.
Much has been made of the parked school buses and how filling them with people could have saved at least a few lives (even if the drivers had to be paid overtime, etc.).
In this day and age, though, you absolutely cannot rely on the government - whether it's the city, the school district, or FEMA - to look after your best interests. By the time they get around to acting, it could be too late.
As this article points out, priorities for New Orleans were to construct hugely expensive rail systems that didn't really go anywhere so tourists could have a good time. (Hey, it's been a few years since I was in Norlins, and I had a good time even without riding a trolley down canal street - as I think everybody did.) Little thought was given to spending a few million on basic transportation, or at least developing an alternative for those who don't have cars when an emergency arises.
The lessons of New Orleans and Katrina are going to be a tough sell in much of the country, unfortunately. The anti-automobile movement (disguised as "smart growth" and other easier-to-swallow covers) is too well entrenched in city planning departments and too well funded by (no surprise here) non-profit organizations and even the EPA. Even a disaster like this will not change their way of thinking. They would prefer to point fingers of blame rather than consider the possibility that their goals are dangerous to society.
Good post.
New Orleans is an advertisement for owing a private automobile and a damning critique of public transportation.
Unfortunately this situation uncovers (among many other social and governmental shortcomings), the perils of dependency on public transportation in today's world, particularly in an emergency..
Soon, the libs will be demanding a car for everyone.
Well now BS.
We have seen the masses of busses just sitting there. The poor may not have had "automobility" but they sure had one hell of a lot of busses just sitting there and doing nothing, thanks to the unmatched stupidty of Mayor Numnut Nagin.
You RATs. You are so predicable.
At the taxpayers expense no doubt.
The city leaders had at least two full days to use these hundreds of buses to evac the poor, exactly as their own emergency management plan called for.
Here's the southeast Louisiana evac plan supplement, most recently revised in 2000. Go to page 13, read paragraph 5. It states:
5. The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating.
What does FEMA have to do with evacuation PRIOR to a hurricane?
Exactly.
LOL! Hadn't thought of that but doubt it since they hate cars so much. Good point though.
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Number of Deaths Caused by Hurricanes in the U.S.
1900-1919 10,000
1920-1939 3,751
1940-1959 1,119
1960-1979 453
1980-1999 57
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This is far more related to weather forecasting advances. Cars get you out of danger, but don't help at all if the storm hits without warning.
Seems as if I've heard that before somewhere.
It doesn't bear thinking what will happen when a strong earthquake hits this country. Except that someone has to.
I have an account there, I just posted this image from the thread.
Sorry Indy, no offense meant..
Nothing.
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