Lack of Automobility Key to New Orleans Tragedy

Thoreau Institute ^ | 4 September 2005 | Randal O'Toole

[logician2u]

Vanishing Automobile update #55

Lack of Automobility Key to New Orleans Tragedy

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           57

Source: 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.

• In the late 1980s and 1990s, New Orleans spent at least $15 million converting an abandoned rail line into the 1.5-mile Riverfront Streetcar line.
• In 2004, New Orleans opened the 3.6-mile Canal Street streetcar line at a cost of nearly $150 million.
• New Orleans was planning to spend another $120 million on a Desire Street streetcar line.

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.

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Thoreau Institute | Vanishing Automobile | Vanishing Automobile Updates

[jordan8]

The white people got out," declared the New York Times today.

Yeah, most got out decades before Katrina when they were consciously and knowingly subjected to a policy of ethnic cleansing by the Nazi left. This would also be a good time to remind people that at least 60,000 white people have been mass-murdered since the 60's by black criminals and, who knows, hundreds of thousands, possibly more than a million have been mass-raped by black criminals while the editors of the New York participate in and sponsored those crimes by suppressing information about them.

[logician2u]

I don't see the relevance of your remarks to this thread. Sorry.

[Howlin]

needless slaughter of the innocent...

Frankly, I'm shocked that you said that; this is life, Torie.

Bad things happen; people die; it could be you or me next week.

And I sure as hell don't want you to change the government because I didn't get out of the way.

The answer is NO.

[metmom]

A lot of those people shown hauling out armfuls of booty sure looked healthy and strong enough to have walked out, too.

[KingNo155]

Those who curse SUV and large Vans should try evacuating a family of 5 in a Toyota Prius, If you grease all your family members up you might fit, but forget about taking a bottle of water .

[tubebender]

When cars are outlawed only outlaws will have cars...

[ridesthemiles]

Been thinking about this structure for days....

Keep harping about"global Warming" , hammer at people to ride bicycles, etc, use mass transit,,,I haven't seen any pics of NOLA mass transit buses or trolleys or whatever.
Guess If they made me give up my car/truck, I would still have my horses to ride to get away from trouble.

[Wolfstar]

The tragedy of New Orleans isn't primarily due to racism or government incompetence, though both played a role.

Overall, a good article. However, I want to know precisely how it is that racism played any role whatsoever in this catastrophe.

[logician2u]

Me too.

It doesn't hurt to ask.

[Grizzled Bear]

Shouldn't that be "Lack of Intestinal Fortitude" or "Lack of Spinal Integrity?"

[NYCVirago]

Remember that slogan from the car commercial, "It's not just your car, it's your freedom?" The libs don't want us to have that freedom.

[Travis McGee]

20 year old Jabbar Gibson did a better job of using buses to evacuate the poor of New Orleans than the mayor.

[Travis McGee]

The captain of the Titanic may also "choose" not to use all of his lifeboats, or to lower them half full.

[jocon307]

I bet the rate of car ownership is even lower in NYC than it is in NO. And there are 8 million people there. So, I don't know how people would be able to evacuate en masse from NYC.

[jocon307]

Yes, you are right, it appears many car owners didn't drive their cars out of NO afterall.

[Gamecock]

I might be missing the bus (no pun intended, well, maybe a lttle one) but in every rescue scene the MSM shows, there are cars and trucks sitting underwater.

There seems to be plenty of automobiles sitting around.

[LadyNavyVet]

Do you realize you're calling for a repeal of substantial portions of the Constitution? Most Governors (Jeb in FL, Riley in AL, Barbour in MS) are up to the task when disaster strikes. We shouldn't throw out the Constitution because Blanco wasn't.

[Alia]

Good! article. Thank you for posting it.

[logician2u]

You are very welcome. Thanks for taking time to comment.

[ckilmer]

The Southern Louisiana Evacuation Plan specifically stated that people without private transportation were to be transported on public buses. Here is the original post of the plan

There were not just "200 buses". There were 200 buses in just one photo and Freepers studying the post-Katrina satellite images have counted over 400 buses altogether at other city parking.

At 70 people per bus that is 28,000 people per round trip that could have been taken out of the storm surge area in the 48 hours prior the Katrina striking.

After the storm hit, what makes you think that buses sent from outside of New Orleans could drive through the flooded mess any better than the 145 New Orleans city buses that were parked 1.2 miles away from the Superdome?

Was Scotty supposed to beam the outside buses to the Superdome and them beam them back out so that they would not have to drive through impassable roads?

The time to evacuate those 200,000 low-income people on public buses OUT OF THE STORM SURGE ZONE was BEFORE the Category 4 storm struck.

That was what the Southern Louisiana Evacuation Plan for New Orleans specifically called for.

The Democrat Governor and the Democrat Mayor did NOTHING to carry out that portion of the plan. They left 200,000 low-income resident abandoned and they now blame the Federal Government for not having Scotty beam down a massive logistics effort after a human disaster of their own making.