Transportation Equity and Environmental Justice: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina

Abstract

The case of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina represents the chronic neglect of warnings about inevitable disaster and, in this case, the lack of attention devoted to clearly foreseen risks and the planning to deal with them. Particular examples include the lack of foresight in evacuation planning for people in New Orleans who did not own cars or who could not afford gas. One could argue that this was a completely unique set of circumstances; however, some South Florida cities that have extensive experience with disasters ranging from fire to hurricanes actually monitor car ownership statistics and have emergency plans that feature sending public transportation to neighborhoods with low car ownership rates. The information from public transportation route planning (which often takes into account mobility levels) could be easily used to identify the locations of residents likely to need assistance during evacuations. Related to these planning efforts should be the coordination and use of existing infrastructure, such as fleets of school buses. This would result in the consequent need for legal liability safe harbors that are common barriers to interagency sharing of resources. In this article we discuss a variety of other issues that could also be used to inform future planning efforts, many with political implications, thus requiring a larger dialogue and potentially significant changes to governance or bureaucratic structures.