When there is an emergency in cities like New Orleans where they are trying to get everyone to leave, why do the authorities not open the other side of the freeway to allow more traffic to get out of the vicinity quicker? The picture on the left shows 3 lines of a freeway in use and very few vehicles going the other way.
Comments
Amen brother! I was saying the very same thing when I first saw the pictures of the jam of the millions of people trying to leave the city.
The only thing I can figure is that it would be very difficult to change the direction of the “entrance ramps” to allow traffic to go the other way.
They need to put something in place so that they can open up the median and allow traffic to move over to the other side for a large stretch of the routes leading out of a city that has a potential need for evacuation. It only opens in cases like this and there is a switch somewhere that will close down the entrances to that direction from side streets.
In that picture, there are what appears to be 2-3 lanes to the right of the jam that look empty to me too. Why isn’t there traffic there? Ah well, glad I don’t live down there! 🙂