The media are making a big issue out of the traffic jams, as if you can evacuate 4 million people and not have horrific trtaffic jams. Even ordinary rush hour traffic has traffic jams, and it would be folly to expect this kind of an evacuation not to have huge traffic jams. That's why they started 3 days before the storm.
What bothers me is seeing all of those southbound lanes still open and empty after 24 hours. Just like where that bus fire happened. By now, those lanes should be being used. It's been a full day of traffic jams. I understand traffic jams. I went to work in them every day for a very long time.
And I also understand that it was hard for them to predict that a LOT of people didn't have to evacuate (because of mandatory evacs) decided to anyways voluntarily because of their recent memories of Katrina. So that has caused a lot of probably extra traffic.
But, for goodness sake, ALL southbound lanes, need to go north by now.
The media just sucks sometimes!!!