Highway congestion during evacuation: examining the household’s choice of number of vehicles to evacuate

Praveen Maghelal (), Xiangyu Li () and Walter Gillis Peacock ()
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Praveen Maghelal: Khalifa University of Science and Technology
Xiangyu Li: West Texas A&M University
Walter Gillis Peacock: Texas A&M University

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2017, vol. 87, issue 3, No 7, 1399-1411

Abstract: Abstract Hurricane evacuations in coastal counties have been reviewed and analyzed for the role of household preparedness and decisions before and during a disaster. However, one of the several emerging problems in the hurricane evacuation is transportation. Transportation issues have become more important in coastal evacuations as traffic problems impinge on people’s ability to get out of harm’s way and ultimately influence their decisions to evacuate. To add to the complexity, when families evacuate in multiple vehicles, it leads to additional vehicular traffic on roads and increased pressure on the transportation systems. However, little has been investigated on the characteristics that influence a household’s decision to evacuate in one or multiple vehicles. The outcome from such an analysis can help both the emergency managers and the transportation planners to targets groups that report taking more vehicles to develop policies that result in efficient evacuation. This study investigates the responses of evacuees surveyed after Hurricane Rita in the counties of Galveston, Brazoria and Harris County. The ordinary least square regression analysis revealed that access to transportation characteristics of a household such as number of registered vehicles in a household and number of eligible drivers was positively and significantly related to evacuating in more vehicles. Meanwhile, the risk of reaching destination safely was negatively related to taking more vehicles for evacuation even though both the risk index and deterrence index were positively significant. The time of decision and evacuation did not report any statistical significance.

Keywords: Household Evacuation; Congestion; Number of vehicles; Hurricane Rita (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11069-017-2823-5

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