Good grief! Why don't people take side roads? Accounts of people taking the freeways is "gridlock." Surely there must be other roads out of these cities. Someone on one of the Katrina thread commented that they took the backroads out and they were clear. The freeway is the LAST route I would use to evacuate.
I've wondered that too. I rarely use freeways even when traveling under normal conditions because they're so often clogged with traffic. I prefer smaller roads. Are there many alternate routes out?
The thing with taking side/back roads is getting over bridges. They limit where you can go.
My husband left Galveston 4-1/2 before the mandatory evacuation at about 1:30 yesteday afternoon ~ once across the causeway he took "side roads" ~ he took HWY 146 to Hwy 59 and at 8:00AM this morning he is still south of Lufkin!
There are some Farm-to-Market roads around Houston that might work ... but they may be stacked up, too.
We tried doing this around 5 am. We are not even in the evacuation zone, we were just worried about riding out the storm. ALL of the back road are bumper to bumper too. It's absolutely horrifying. They tell us out in the suburbs to "ride it out".
Good Question !!
Perhaps too many nowdays always in such a hurry traveling interstates, they have never bothered *finding* the MANY backroads of Texas.