“Can't anyone get me out of here?”
Evacuating the Nation’s fourth largest city is not easy:
Sixteen hours to San Antonio and Dallas. Eleven hours to Austin. With over a million people trying to flee vulnerable parts of the Houston area, Hurricane Rita has already become a nightmare even for those who left last night.
Hoping to speed the evacuation ahead of Hurricane Rita’s arrival, authorities decided to open the incoming lanes of two Houston freeways to outbound traffic for the first time ever. Plans to reverse the traffic flow on U.S. 290 were abandoned because of traffic problems it would create in Brenham and Giddings.
Quite understandably, however, Houstonians are not presently concerned with traffic problems in other cities:
Drivers weren’t willing to wait for the same to happen on I-10. Near Sealy, a stream of motorists who heard of the plan on their radios pulled into the inbound lanes and drove off. Their impromptu traffic management plan raised everyone’s average speed from stop and go to 55 mph.
If you’re inbound on a Houston freeway, I’d suggest you get your ass off the road.