I-75 during the height of the Hurricane Irma evacuation was a river of cars, stacked and backed for miles.
Rebecca Casey drove 85 miles an hour on the shoulder.
"I’ve never driven on a shoulder before. We had a rental, we didn’t really care we just wanted to get out," she says while laughing.
It saved her a ton of time, but most drivers didn't know Governor Scott made that legal during the evacuation.
But unclogging the log jam on I-75 may have less to do with the highway itself and more to do with what every car needs to get out of dodge. Gas.
It took Jai Subramanya eight hours to drive from Tampa to Tallahassee. He says the biggest bottlenecks were at the exits where people were pulled off to refuel, only to find there was no gas. But he has an idea on how to speed things up...NASCAR style.
"Mobile fuel stations, have police escort them into lanes, fuel us up and get us out. If you turned this into a NASCAR pit stop with DOT fuel stations, everyone (could have) came in, fueled up and got out," he says.
In a state of storms turning the highways into the days of thunder may not be practical, but neither is a monster hurricane.
Governor Scott defends his decision not to order the interstate to be routed one-way, saying the southbound routes needed to remain open for fuel trucks.
Nevertheless other state leaders are calling for some kind of gas reserve in central Florida. Governor Scott wants FDOT to come up with solutions by January.
