When a road gets overcrowded it’s capacity to move cars goes down. You also get the situation where the cars can enter but since traffic is not moving, no one can get to their exit, so you have a situation where it just gets worse.
Why don’t the authorities close the highway to entering traffic when it is at max capacity (meaning the ability to move cars, not the most cars that can fit on the pavement), then only allow cars to enter when the traffic gets lighter?
This would seem to move the max # of people, at a much faster rate then the TX evac, and not risk so many people running out of gas.
I believe that everyone is still going to need to get onto that highway eventually. All that would do is cause huge traffic jams on the secondary roads which is probably even worse. Plus, you run the risk of never opening up the interstate to those that are farther up because of the traffic entering farther down. Those roads were operating at max capacity 24 hours a day and there is no real way around it.
They do what you’re suggesting all the time, block entrances, etc.
But they do it a lot because of a local problem, such as a chemical spill affecting all lanes.
So they do it for those situations. But it chews up a lot of manpower and time.
When several exits are worthless, that would mean blocking dozens of on ramps, and it’s just not worth it. All the cop cars are needed for the main clamity, whether fire or flood or whatever.
I did like the point this past week when Texas set both haves of the freeway to go away from the storm. That was unexpected and seemed clever, although I suppose they had it in their bag of potential tricks all along.