Introduction
The Southeastern Pennsylvania Region, consisting of the City of Philadelphia and Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties, is comprised of over 260 municipalities and over 4.2 million people. When planning for emergencies and the resulting impacts individual municipalities or counties cannot operate in a vacuum due to the regional interdependencies; this is especially true in large scale events requiring evacuation.
To help better prepare the region for large scale, unplanned events the Transportation Subcommittee of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Regional Task Force, in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) has undertaken creation of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Emergency Transportation Plan. With a focus on the transportation network, this Plan will explore the complexities of county and/or regional evacuation including evacuation-receiving events from neighboring states.
Since coordination among agencies and the flow of critical information is core when conducting responses to regional events this will also be explored as part of the planning process. With the recently completed City of Philadelphia’s Evacuation Routes as a starting point; the Southeastern Pennsylvania Emergency Transportation Plan will carry the evacuation routes and coordination planning to the surrounding 4 county area ensuring a consistent response across the region.