Katrina

Note: I'm loathe to post this next comment because I don't want to be in the company of such witches as Ann Coulter and Cindy Sheehan who are taking advantage of tragedy for cheap publicity. Still the point is important so I'll make it.
Hurricane Katrina Proves We Need Passenger Rail
By Daniel G. Jennings
The effects of Hurricane Katrina upon the grand old city of New Orleans once again demonstrate America’s need for a modern passenger rail network and worse lack of such a network.
News reports indicate that thousands perhaps tens of thousands of people were trapped in New Orleans a city that sits below sea level but is surrounded by water on two sides as Katrina approached. Some of these people were the usual it can’t happen to me morons who stick around for any disaster (note the deaths of people that stupid might be a good thing at least for the gene pool), but judging from news reports the vast majority of them were average people trapped in the city by circumstance. For example 9,000 poor people were herded into the Superdome, a flimsy structure built for football not survival and were there when wind ripped off the stadium’s roof.
The reason these people were in the Superdome and others were trapped in other parts of the city was that authorities apparently had no way of moving them out. Some of these people were those too poor to own cars (a predicament many of us will soon be in judging by gas prices), others were those who couldn’t drive because of disability or age, some were those who choose not to own cars because of economics or convenience, Joe Working Class who can afford a mortgage payment on a decent house if he has no car payment. Some of course were those who had cars, but the car broke down and had no money for a mechanic or worse had a good car and money for repair but the garage was closed the mechanic having wisely left town. Rental cars were also unavailable the car rent agents having fled as well. The bus depot will be closed, and the taxi cab drivers fled preferring to drive their families to safely.
There was no way for these people to leave town, aircraft can only carry a limit number of people and can’t land in say downtown. Military helicopters well, they’re all over in Iraq fighting the war. Buses well they use the highways, what if the highways are gridlocked?
In other words there was no way for large numbers of New Orleans residents, rich, poor, middle class, white, black etc. to quickly get out of town. Even as the hurricane approached, all they could do was hunker down. In the aftermath all they can do is sit around in the flooded city and wait for evacuation.
The sad thing is that if Katrina had hit New Orleans back in 1935 or 1945 there would have been a cheap and simple way to move all those people to Baton Rouge or if necessary Little Rock, Birmingham, Dallas, Houston and Nashville: trains. Back in 1935 the National Guard and regular military could have simply herded all the residents of New Orleans down to the train stations and had them board passenger trains, many diverted from other lines. The trains would then have taken everybody who could have reached them to safety.
Today that wouldn’t be possible we don’t have a passenger train network in most of the country. If a catastrophe hits say a big earthquake in California that collapses the freeways or a terror attack in which a dirty bomb (a conventional explosive that spreads radiation) is unleashed in a major American city. (and a dirty bomb is just as likely to be set off by a couple of college drop out Marxists trying to stop President Bush’s evil plot of world conquest as Bin Laden’s followers). Americans may have no way to leave their homes or hometowns.
They’ll get in their cars and head for the Interstate only to find it gridlocked. If they have money they’ll head for the airport only to find that only a few thousand can fly out. Or they’ll drive out into the countryside hoping that Aunt Bee and Andy will put them up out in Mayberry only to find that Mayberry is only found in TV Land reruns. They’ll approach small town USA only to find some redneck with a deputy’s badge and an assault rifle telling them to go to the next town. Or worse Boss Hogg and Sheriff Roscoe charging $1,000 a night for a hotel room in Hazard County. Many will try to take the bus finding only that the bus runs on the same congested freeways as every other vehicle.
Perhaps we’ll learn why passenger rail is vital when hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans find themselves herded into empty cargo containers on rail cars by the National Guard (recently augmented by heavily tattooed “volunteers” from the prison system) and hauled to relocation camps in the countryside after some catastrophe. Perhaps then we’ll realize why we needed passenger rail.