The need for “surge capacity” in the event of catastrophic hazards is well understood in planning for public health response and has justifiably received national attention. Insuring the capacity of public transit systems to respond to the need for mass evacuations in the event of a catastrophe, particularly a “no-notice” catastrophe such as a terror attack or earthquake, has, unfortunately, received less concerted and coordinated attention.

To help address this attention gap the Committee on the Role of Public Transportation in Emergency Evacuation National Academy of Sciences this week released a study, The Role of Transit in Emergency Evacuation, which provides the most comprehensive review to date of the readiness, or lack thereof, of major public transit systems. Click here to download full report.

The study, requested by Congress and funded by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the Transit Cooperative Research Program, explores the capacity of transit systems serving the nation’s 38 largest urbanized areas to accommodate the evacuation, egress, or ingress of people from or to critical locations in times of emergency.

To illustrate the urgency of its topic the report cited the role of mass transit in the debacle of the Katina response. “In 2005,” it says, “ transit could have played an important role in New Orleans in advance of Hurricane Katrina by assisting in the evacuation of an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 vulnerable residents who lacked access to a private vehicle. A plan for the purpose existed, but failed utterly when few transit drivers reported to work, transit equipment proved inadequate and was left unprotected, and communications and incident control were nonexistent.” “Emergency plans that inadequately represent transit or are poorly executed risk significant loss of life,” the report adds, “ particularly among those who are dependent on transit for evacuation out of harm’s way.”

Three years after Katrina lack of coordination of mass transit planning into overall emergency response strategy remains chronic on a national basis the report found.

“ The majority of the emergency operations plans for large urbanized areas are only partially sufficient in describing in specific and measurable terms how a major evacuation could be conducted successfully, and few focus on the role of transit,” it says. Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, DHS and the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), for instance, conducted two comprehensive, peer-reviewed national assessments of emergency preparedness. They found that the majority (85 percent) of the emergency operations plans of the 75 largest urbanized areas it reviewed were only partially sufficient to manage a catastrophic. Only a fraction of plans estimated the time required to evacuate those located in different risk zones or incorporated all available modes of transportation; just 8 and 7 percent of plans, respectively, were rated “sufficient” on these two measures.

The report recommends that “local emergency managers should focus greater attention on evacuation planning as an important element of overall emergency planning, and should both determine and incorporate a role for transit and other public transportation providers in meeting evacuation needs.”

Another disturbing finding of the report was that even among localities with evacuation plans, few have provided for a major disaster that could involve multiple jurisdictions or multiple states in a region and necessitate the evacuation of a large fraction of the population.

“Even in urban areas with comprehensive local emergency response plans,” the report observes, “ regional evacuation plans are works in progress at best, reflecting the complexity of planning for large scale emergencies that cross many jurisdictional and agency boundaries, as well as the questionable feasibility of evacuating major portions of large, highly developed, congested urban areas.” An ongoing problem, according to the report, is that “leadership is lacking at the regional level to conduct the requisite planning because no one “owns” the problem. Many transit agencies are regional authorities providing service across jurisdictions, and thus have a regional perspective, but their primary mission is not emergency planning or evacuation. Local governments are attempting to fill the gap, but a clear decision-making framework for doing so is lacking, guidance on how to proceed is limited, and funds to defray the costs are insufficient. Thus even when regional initiatives exist, they often lack structure, plans are incomplete, and progress is slow.

The report is critical of efforts so far by DHS and FEMA , in conjunction with the US Department of Transportation, to provide guidance to state and local governments on regional evacuation planning, including the role of transit and other public transportation providers.

“In January 2008,” the report says, “ DHS finalized new guidance, including a special mass evacuation annex, as part of the National Response Framework, an update of its guide for all levels of government and the private sector on the conduct of all-hazards incident response. In addition, FEMA released an updated Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (CPG 101) for public comment that provides guidance to state, local, and tribal governments on the preparation of emergency operations plans. Both documents fall short, however, in providing sufficient detail on the development of mass evacuation plans, such as failing to include a template for a regional plan and the key agencies that should be involved. Greater clarity on the roles and responsibilities of those within DHS who work with state and local governments is also needed. State governments are in the best position to ensure the development of regional plans, working through appropriate regional entities such as metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) and FEMA regional offices.”

A major priority in developing effective regional strategies, according to the report, is making transit agencies a full partner in local emergency evacuation planning.

“The case studies conducted by the committee revealed that those transit agencies most involved in emergency evacuation are an integral part of local emergency evacuation plans and the decision-making structure in an emergency,” the report says. As an example of mass transit involvement it cites the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra (commuter rail), and Amtrak as key support agencies in the central business district (CBD) evacuation plan for the City of Chicago. Each agency has its own detailed emergency evacuation plan, but those plans are consistent with the graduated emergency activation levels of the broader CBD plan—ranging from a minor incident that can be handled locally, to a major evacuation that requires extensive support and resources from outside agencies. Transit agencies also coordinate closely with the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications.

A focal point of evacuation planning, the report urges, must be evacuating the carless and people with special needs (e.g., the disabled, the elderly, special-needs populations with pets) during an emergency, groups still inadequately addressed in most local emergency evacuation plans.

Among the main problems involved in assisting special-needs populations are (a) identification of their geographic locations and transit needs, and the currency of that information; (b) perceived privacy issues associated with obtaining the information; (c) the availability of adequate equipment to meet special transportation needs at the time of an incident; and (d) the potential for conflicts and shortfalls in service because institutions serving special-needs populations (e.g., nursing homes) frequently contract with the same providers responsible for handling the homebound in an emergency evacuation.

Also critical, according to the report, is developing a public information campaign and sheltering strategy specifically targeting these populations.

The Tampa urbanized area, one of the committee’s case study sites, is cited for its innovative use of transit in the evacuation of special-needs populations and as a potential model for other areas. “In Tampa,” says the report, “transit service providers, as well as school bus operators, have focused their resources primarily on transporting special-needs populations in an evacuation. The State of Florida requires that county emergency managers establish voluntary special registries to help identify the medically impaired who need evacuation assistance, and that they provide special-needs shelters. Shelter staffing and medical management are the responsibility of county health departments, whose services are reimbursed by the state health department. There have been extensive outreach efforts to inform special-needs populations, as well as the homeless and the disadvantaged, about transportation and shelter resources in an emergency evacuation (e.g.,annual multilingual hurricane guides, utility bill flyers, door-to-door contact).”