The snarls were the result of poor planning. Those could have been prevented. Those are what prevented the evacuation, not the volume of vehicles. They'll try to dress it up, but they should have been controlling access to the roads heading out...farther inland. The south eastern side of the city couldn't empty, because the west and north were packing out. Part of this is the Mayor's fault. He was encouraging people to leave who lived in areas less effected. Nobody did anything to make sure those of us in between had a route out. Only the early Galveston type evacuees and those in the worst areas had that.

Some neighbors left early on Wed, didn't put any effort into preparing their homes, they just fled. Many went to other parts of Houston where they felt they would have better shelter. There are still quite a few folks around though.

If the folks in charge didn't plan for multi vehicle evac, then they had their heads up their asses. Most families here are two wage earner. And in a number of cases the wife and kids etc were sent out before the husband could get away from work etc. Houston is a working city, people don't live here because they love the ambiance.

Lack of fuel around the state was a major screw up. It meant that vehicles were stacking up at the limits of their range, further snarling traffic. It wasn't just one mistake, there were many, each feeding on one another.

Frankly, they need someone without their head up there ass to do this sort of evaluation and planning. There were intersections with cycling lights on some "minor" parallel escape roads...they were cutting flow to about 10% of what it should have been on those lanes. This is like a big fluid flow/hydraulic problem. The controlling limits are in some ways better defined, and the bottlenecks should be obvious to those with proper understanding of piping network analysis, a map, and a knowledge of the intersections. The bottlenecks are at detail level.