Transactions Newsletter

Service Authority for Freeways and Expressways

Call Boxes Proliferate
During the past year, the call box program has been adding to its network, making improvements, and getting ready to launch a new role for the roadside devices:

• As segments of Oakland's four-mile-long Cypress Freeway reopened over the past year and a half, a total of 50 call boxes were installed, placed every quarter mile.
• A project to replace the 48 call boxes that line the Caldecott Tunnel and its approaches along Highway 24 in the East Bay began late in 1998 and is expected to be completed by June of this year.
• More than 2,000 of the existing 3,500 call boxes in the Bay Area were made more accessible to persons with disabilities this past year. To comply with the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, the call box sites were retrofitted to ensure a continuous, unobstructed path from the roadway or shoulder to the cement pad on which each call box is located. In conjunction with other similar agencies around the state and Caltrans, MTC SAFE is working to improve the remaining call box sites, many of which are currently blocked by curbs designed to prevent water runoff from eroding soil and undermining roadways.
  
• Planning is under way for a project to attach high-tech sensors to call boxes scattered across the region. These "smart" call boxes will feed valuable traffic data, such as freeway speeds, to Caltrans' traffic managers and MTC's traveler information system, TravInfo(TM).
• In order to improve the speed with which calls from call boxes are answered, MTC is exploring the possibility of hiring a private answering service to respond to nonemergency calls.

Freeway Angels
Public response to the roving tow truck service has been overwhelmingly positive right from the start. "Freeway Service Patrol drivers are like angels sent from heaven" and "I was truly impressed to see my taxes working for me in such a fine manner -- thank you for a great idea, executed to perfection" are typical examples of recent comments relayed by grateful motorists (via response cards, letters and voicemail messages) to the California Highway Patrol, a partner in the FSP.

Over the past year, new FSP service was introduced along more than 19 miles of highway in areas where peak hour traffic has been increasing:

• In the Highway 101/Interstate 880 area of Santa Clara County, coverage was expanded by seven miles;
• A 5.5-mile stretch of the South Bay's State Route 85 was added to the FSP network;
• A new 6.6-mile beat was created in the Interstate 580/680 interchange area in Alameda County to help mitigate traffic problems caused by a major Caltrans construction project.

Recognizing the effectiveness of FSP programs, not only in the Bay Area but throughout the state, Caltrans recently increased the annual allocation for the statewide program from $12.4 million -- the yearly allocation for the past four years -- to $15 million for 1998-99. The Bay Area's share amounts to $3.1 million for the current fiscal year.

-- Réka Goode