Koolau
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I know they had (have) plans to do that but I think they are very reluctant to use it (again) due to the disaster it caused when it was used back in 2005 for Rita... Now they are trying (again) to evacuate by zones before even considering activating the countraflow plan.... The red text below is a quote from the local news on this topic.
The goal is to avoid a scenario like the mass evacuation and chaos ahead of Hurricane Rita in 2005. Millions of people, most outside of evacuation zones, hit the roads, and wound up stuck in standstill traffic for hours.
Ultimately, the mass exodous proved more deadly than the storm itself.
I was in that mass evacuation back in 2005... I think the biggest problems are that it takes many hours to reverse the inbound lanes to outbound and then divert half of the traffic. Then at some point they have to merge it back and that creates a tremendous bottle neck and traffic just stops.
My impression is that the actual (attempted) evacuation for Rita was begun too late (both folks deciding to do so and the authorities reversing the lanes.) Having said that, I could be wrong so YMMV.