Transit Use in Emergency Evacuations Under Study
A National Research Council committee is holding its second meeting today and tomorrow in Washington, D.C., as it studies how well U.S. public transit can move people to or from critical locations during emergencies in the 38 largest urbanized areas. A report to Congress will be this 20-month project's end result; participants at this meeting are scheduled to include John Benison, chief of the Policy Division in DOT's Office of Civil Rights; Joseph Kammerman, the Washington, D.C. department of transportation's homeland security coordinator; and Brian Wolshon, associate professor in Louisiana State University's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
The committee is hearing from public safety planners, national security coordinators, and representatives for the disabled; its initial meeting took place in November 2006. The project, which began April 20, 2006, is sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration and the Transit Cooperative Research Program. Visit http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?key=48703 for information about project.
The committee's members include Chairman Richard A. White, executive vice president and director of Project Development at DMJM Harris and former general manager and CEO of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority; Dr. Evelyn Blumenberg, associate professor of Urban Planning in the Department of Planning at UCLA's School of Public Affairs; Roosevelt Bradley, director of Miami-Dade Transit; Kenneth A. Brown, director of Risk Assessment and Fire Safety in the Office of System Safety at New York City Transit; Frederick C. Goodine, assistant general manager of the Department of System Safety Risk Management at WMATA; and Andrew Velasquez III, executive director of the City of Chicago's Office of Emergency Management and Communications.