Thursday, September 22, 2005
Rita Evacuation Traffic Cams in Houston
http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/cameras/camtext.aspx
I-10 Katy
I-45 North
US-290 Northwest
US-59 Eastex
Assuming 2 million vehicles and 20 ft. of road per vehicle that's about 7500 linear miles of traffic jam. Assuming that 75% of that is spread over about 36 lanes of outbound traffic that's 156 mile traffic jams, which corresponds roughly to the "100 mile traffic jams" the news is reporting. At 3 mph, that will take 50 hours to get out of the traffic. Most cars (but not hybrids) won't be able to idle for 50 hours. Rita will likely make landfall in less than 40 hours, so a lot of people are going to be riding out Rita (which will hopefully have weakened to only tropical storm strength by the time it gets that far inland) in traffic.
I-10 Katy
I-45 North
US-290 Northwest
US-59 Eastex
Assuming 2 million vehicles and 20 ft. of road per vehicle that's about 7500 linear miles of traffic jam. Assuming that 75% of that is spread over about 36 lanes of outbound traffic that's 156 mile traffic jams, which corresponds roughly to the "100 mile traffic jams" the news is reporting. At 3 mph, that will take 50 hours to get out of the traffic. Most cars (but not hybrids) won't be able to idle for 50 hours. Rita will likely make landfall in less than 40 hours, so a lot of people are going to be riding out Rita (which will hopefully have weakened to only tropical storm strength by the time it gets that far inland) in traffic.
