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By Dom Nozzi
Emergency Evacuation as a Smoke Screen
At times, we are
told that a road must be widened to promote "emergency evacuation" in
the event that a large number of people must be evacuated by car due to
a hurricane, flood, nuclear war, etc.
Caution: In
nearly every case, such an argument is a smoke screen.
When it comes
to issues pertaining to evacuation plans, communities need to be on guard
against people who have a hidden agenda; people who want to widen roads
to promote sprawl and high-speed car travel, and who use "emergency evacuation"
as a scare tactic. By mentioning evacuation, the road widening lobby can
achieve the "moral high ground." Who, after all, could be opposed to evacuating
the population if there is an emergency? (the hidden agenda, of course,
is to widen the road to promote sprawl, real estate, and happy cars).
The community
needs to establish a MAXIMUM SIZE for its roads. (For example, establishing
a policy that states that the community shall never build a road bigger
than 4 lanes.) Because big roads are very harmful to the quality of life
(and sustainability) of a community, the community could decide that,
say, 4 lane roads are the maximum size roads that will ever be built in
the community. The maximum is a tool chosen by the community to protect
its quality of life. That becomes the "level of service standard" that
the community adopts in its growth management plan.
The 4-lane
maximum road then becomes a limiting factor for population growth in the
community. The community would then have the leverage to say to a proposed
new residential development: "I'm sorry, but our adopted plan does not
allow you to build here. If you build here, there will be "X" number of
new car trips that will need to be evacuated in the event of an emergency.
Unfortunately for you, our evacuation plan states that we must be able
to evacuate our community in "Y" minutes. If the new car trips from your
proposed project were added to our 4-lane roads, we would not be able
to evacuate fast enough. Since our plan clearly states that we will not
exceed 4 lanes on our roads, we cannot approve your project."
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