HOUSTON -- For many Texans, the worst part of Hurricane Rita was sitting in gridlock traffic for hours on end. Officials hope future evacuations will flow more smoothly with the creation of a task force, KPRC Local 2 reported Friday.

Gov. Rick Perry, Houston Mayor Bill White, and Harris County Judge Robert Eckels announced the creation of the evacuation transportation and logistics task force.

The purpose of the independent group is to make recommendations on improvements to transportation and logistics for large evacuations, such as the recent evacuation of an estimated 3 million Texans from the Gulf Coast Area, including Houston and Harris County.

"Because local officials gave evacuation notice early, despite the agonizing traffic that ensued, we got millions of people out of harm's way in time," Perry said in a statement. "But by no means did the plan work flawlessly. The purpose of this task force is to learn from our most recent experience, and to better prepare us for the future, recognizing another hurricane or tropical storm could threaten Texas in the remaining two months of the hurricane season."

"Gov. Perry, Judge Eckels and I are quite concerned that both state planning and implementation of a plan needs to improve for reducing traffic congestion and refueling in the case for a large-scale evacuation of the Houston metropolitan area," White said.

The Task Force will include 10 experts on transportation, fueling, traffic management and communications.

David Saperstein is one of the members of the task force. He is the chairman for the office of mobility for the city of Houston.

"Certainly, you could make a case for -- we could have done the contralanes more quickly. We had a situation where it took us 12 hours to get them organized, so we have to figure out where those stumbling blocks were in the system that it would take so long and how can we come up with a solution," Saperstein said.

The task force includes the following people.

Jack Little, of Houston (Chair), former president and CEO of Shell Oil Company
Gordon Bethune, of Houston, former chairman and CEO of Continental Airlines
Theron Bowman, chief of police for City of Arlington
Bill King, former Mayor of Kemah, Texas
Bill Klesse, of San Antonio, executive vice president and COO of Valero Energy
Dr. Carol Lewis, of Houston, associate professor in Transportation Studies and director of the Center for Transportation Training and Research at Texas Southern University
Jerry Patterson, of Austin, Texas Land Commissioner
David Saperstein, of Houston, CEO of Five S Capital, former chairman and CEO of Metro Networks Inc., volunteer chairman of the Office of Mobility for the City of Houston
Karen Sexton, of Galveston, vice president and CEO for Hospitals and Clinics at UTMB
Mike Trevino, of Houston, general manager of Public and Governmental Affairs for Marathon Oil

"We know that local officials cannot plan for fuels or cannot reverse the flow of highway lanes unilaterally. These are wide issues and may also require some federal assistance," Perry said. "We need some of the best minds in Texas to advise us and the federal government on how to avoid problems such as those experienced with the Hurricane Rita evacuation in the future."

"When the governor was asked by me and Judge Eckels in the early hours of Thursday morning to open more lanes to outbound traffic on Interstate 10 and Interstate 45, he immediately agreed. But both of us are concerned that the mechanism for this extraordinary action was not in state plans and took almost 12 hours to implement by the relevant agencies," White said. "There was just an unacceptable level of traffic in the traffic jams on the freeways."

White said the task force would provide recommendations that the state would seriously consider implementing.

"We imagine that this report would cover changes to the state plan for providing fuel, for managing the traffic lanes in the case of a major evacuation and for traffic management all along the route," he said.