Earlier this year, city officials pulled back from a plan to hire consultants to update evacuation routes in Boston and the surrounding area for the first time since 2018.
They say city workers are preparing updates that will take into account changes to city streets and other issues the consultants would have been responsible for analyzing.
"We are definitely working on updates now," Shumeane Benford, the chief of the Office of Emergency Management (OEM), told The Boston Guardian. "The expectation is to do it as quickly and reasonably as we can."
At the end of 2022 OEM put out a request for consultants to update evacuation route modeling and create decision-making support tools for the Metro Boston Homeland Security Region (MBHSR), which includes Boston and eight other surrounding communities.
The last time those evacuation routes were updated was 2018, after a prior update in 2015. However, the consultants were to be funded through a federal Urban Area Security Initiative grant, and every consultant bid for the project came in higher than the bid would have funded, OEM spokesperson Ky'ron Owens said.
So now OEM is working on the updates, which include examining potential route additions and changes as well as looking at road changes like major construction projects, bus lanes and bike lanes that could affect evacuation plans.
"We want to understand the implications of the changing of the streetscape. What does it mean when you widen sidewalks and reduce lanes? Does that reduce traffic that can move over it?" Benford said, adding that OEM officials will consult with other city agencies like the Transportation Department, and the Police and Fire Departments to get information on road changes.
But they'll also reach out to neighborhood residents for input as well, Benford said.
"Engaging the community, you get that buy-in early, you get granular detail about the neighborhood you don't get in the data," Benford said. "We want to learn how to do our plans better. We fully expect to have a community engagement process."
The department has already gotten some feedback about evacuation routes through a different project.
Earlier this year, OEM put out another request for contractors to run tabletop exercises for MBHSR departments to "identify gaps in evacuation planning, capabilities, and resources" and ultimately hired Tetra Tech at a cost of $121,000.
One of those exercises simulated an evacuation of 10,000 people in Boston after a hazardous waste leak, and the evaluation after the exercise identified evacuation signs as an "Area for Improvement."
"The pre-existing signage simply states, “Evacuation Route” and may lead residents into danger if they are following the established hurricane routes. These signs are infrequently spaced throughout the city and can be difficult to navigate even during a hurricane evacuation," the evaluation reads in part.
City Emergency Management Planning Unit Supervisor Mikayla Criger said the signs are serving their purpose as directions to follow out of the city, but in the case of a hazmat leak or other danger in a specific area they could unintentionally direct residents toward the problem.
"Taking a look at the signs is part of the update process. We're trying to identify ways to improve the signs' language, but we're bound by the FTA as to what the signs look like," Criger said.
