National Media Not Paying Attention to Evac Stories North of NOLA?

It seems that the downside of having 1.9 million people evacuate Louisiana this time is that perhaps the evacuation routes might have been a bit underpowered.

Despite what’s been heard on CNN, the Best of New Orleans blog reported this afternoon:

I am livid with the information we are receiving from the authorities and the media about traffic on I-59. We left our home at 3:45am and didn’t get to Hattiesburg until 1:00pm. The contraflow, which we took, was a joke. It only lasted about 10 miles or so, and was bumper-to-bumper from start to finish.

And authorities and media keep saying how wonderful contraflow is and keep downplaying the reports by drivers that there is serious traffic problems on I-59. It is irresponsible and potentially fatal to families to continue to tell them to evacuate at this time and to tell them that it is safe to go down I-59.

Although it would be unreasonable to expand regional freeways to permit free-flowing traffic in the event of an evacuation (a lot of capacity which would likely be under-utilized in normal circumstances)…perhaps post-storm someone ought to look into what could be done to improve evac plans.  For example, perhaps identifying alternate routes after contra-flow stretches…or extending contra-flow (diverting coast-bound traffic to non-expressways) might not be inappropriate plans to make?