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You under estimate the amount of effort it takes to keep roads clear or how badly ICE and Snow can effect traffic. In terms of transit anything that effects cars effects busses and trains don't run everywhere and you need to walk home at some point risking injury. In terms of roads 2 inches of snow will drop the speed that you can safely travel to under 30MPH and I have crawled in traffic at speeds of like 20MPH or less due to snow not being cleared. Snow effects the traction of the car which can you to slide and have accidents and ICE forget about it safe travel with ice is darned near impossible.
A grid can handle more traffic more easily than sprawl but no grid is going to save you when the roads themselves are not safe to travel on.
Show me the dense gridded city that paralyzed itself for 2 days over a minor weather event - has never happened.
This one was - it was mostly snow a little ice and very minor indeed. It was only a disaster because of where it hit. A gridded networked city with Transit might have had a difficult afternoon.
Sandy had a storm surge of 9 feet + high tide. Anything built right near the coast would get damaged, it doesn't matter whether it's in a place more used to hurricanes or not. Wetlands absorb water, but you need a large distance of wetland to absorb the surge. If you're right by the coast, it doesn't matter if it's a concrete environment or not. Less built up New Jersey and Staten Island got plenty of storm surge compared to the rest of NYC.
And people in the South have better sense than to build major cities right next to the Gulf. There's a reason Houston is inland a bit. Sandy would not have been major event along the Gulf. But those people in the North are so dumb and can't manage a category 1 (sarcasm)
And people in the South have better sense than to build major cities right next to the Gulf. There's a reason Houston is inland a bit. Sandy would not have been major event along the Gulf. But those people in the North are so dumb and can't manage a category 1 (sarcasm)
The worst of Sandy was 13 feet including high tide. The category 4 hurricane that wiped out Galveston was 15 feet. Sandy wouldn't have been as nasty, but the city still would have been destroyed. A direct hit from a Sandy-strength to Miami would be nasty:
Yes, everybody learns from experience. And now, most people know better. Miami has nothing to do with the South though. It was built by Northern people for Northern people :-)
I will admit that the ice was bad in Atlanta. However, I agree with Komeht about the road network. The bottlenecks are what caused people to abandon their cars. If people were able to use alternate roads, they wouldn't have had to sleep in grocery stores.
Ice is not a minor event when you take into account topography. Yes, the road network is insufficient, as is public transportation, but ice on the hilly terrain makes any street a no-go.
If sprawl was such as major player in what happened last week in Atlanta, what about Birmingham? The same thing happened here as it did in Atlanta, and Birmingham is a much smaller city. The OP has an agenda, and fails to realize that ICE not snow caused what happened in both places.
Here is a video someone took by a drone of aftermath of last weeks ice storm. Thanks to the folks at skybama.com
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