Trains and emergency evacuation: Ukraine and freight/emergency transportation planning | Homogeneous versus heterogeneous transportation systems

 A couple weeks ago, charlie called our attention to a great article ("On board the mobile command that's keeping Ukraine's trains running," Business Insider) on how the Ukraine Ministry of Infrastructure has responded to managing its train network in wartime conditions, with special focus on the use of trains to evacuate Ukrainians to safer areas out of the country, and how the staff no longer operates from a fixed position as that would be a highly vulnerable target for attack.  

With regard to transportation in wartime, disasters, and emergencies, there are (at least) three issues: (1) heterogeneous transportation system; (2) managing railroads and road systems; (3) capable of being ingmanagerially flexible.

Kamyshin starting a conference call with the top managers 

of Ukraine's six regional railroads. 

Alan Chin for Insider

People crowding a train platform in Kharkiv, Ukraine

Twitter photo: Nexta_TV

People waiting for trains to take them from Lviv to Poland. 

On Sunday only two trains were running and only women and children were allowed to board.

Photograph: Vincent Haiges/Avalon

Around that time was an NPR article about a volunteer effort in Poland to restore an abandoned train line to facilitate refugee trains from Ukraine ("Poland rebuilds abandoned rail tracks to Ukraine to help refugees fleeing the war").  (Also see "12 hours on board a packed train out of Ukraine," BI, "‘Everyone was fighting to get on a train’: the desperation of Ukrainians trying to reach safety," Guardian).

Ukrainian refugees lining up for services at the Berlin Train Station on March 8, 2022

Michael Sohn, AP

Since there have been other articles on train stations as gateways for Ukrainian refugees ("Berlin train station turns into refugee town for Ukrainians," AP, "Berlin's main train station becomes Ukrainian refugee welcome center," Reuters).  From the NYT:

Now Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is turning Europe’s trains and ornate imperial-era stations into a new refugee crisis network, putting them on a war footing yet again. At least a dozen state- and privately owned railway operators have opened up their services for free to refugees, and their cargo trains are being deployed to bring humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

When I first read the Insider article, I thought about how the US has built, for the most part, a homogeneous mobility paradigm, around cars and trucks and the "Interstate Highway and Defense System" network of high speed roads across the nation.

"The Evolution of the U.S. Interstate Highway System," Vivid Maps

Trucks and roads work well for flexibility, but have capacity constraints both for loads and the number of vehicles, aren't particularly energy efficient, and require lots of personnel.  And they can create significant congestion.

Trains operate with small numbers of personnel and are energy efficient, but can be slower, certainly are less flexible, and are definitely vulnerable in wartime to tracks and trains being bombed. (Bombed tracks can be repaired.)

But when the highway system was created, no one ever considered there would be a time when oil would be super high in price and labor availability would be seriously constrained ("Taking Europe's Trains to Escape, or to Teach, A Conflict's Front Lines." NYT).

Freight transportation planning.  But in any case, the current supply chain logistics problems we have in the US indicate a lack of an adequate and integrated freight transportation planning policy that includes all the elements, including shipping, ports, trains, trucks and related labor issues ("Port of Los Angeles Stops Short of 24-Hour Operations, Unlike Long Beach," Wall Street Journal, "Rigged: Forced into debt, worked past exhaustion, left with nothing," USA Today).

Emergency evacuation.  And I thought back to various hurricane evacuation efforts in Louisiana (Katrina) and Texas (Rita), how the road system was overwhelmed, leading to traffic deaths, and how some people called for train evacuations not realizing that we have so little resources available for passenger train service that unlike in Ukraine today or Europe more generally, for the most part in the US, passenger train service isn't a realistic option for emergency transportation.

Evacuation from Houston in advance of Hurricane Rita, 2005.

Photo: Stan Honda, AFP/Getty Images.

If there are multiple tracks, all railroad tracks can be used for unidirectional traffic, which for safety reasons, is not possible with freeways.

Heterogeneity versus homogeneity in transportation planning.  In any case, the Ukraine example, as sad and as horrifying as it is, demonstrates the importance of hetereogenity in transportation planning and the provision of infrastructure, that you need both train service and car/truck service for both passenger and freight mobility in times of emergency.