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TRANSACTIONS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

July-August 2002

Happy 10th Anniversary, Freeway Service Patrol

Region's Roving Tow Truck Fleet Celebrates By Revving Up Service
Ten years ago this August, three gleaming, white tow trucks took to the freeways of the Bay Area, patrolling 12 miles of congested roadway in Walnut Creek's Interstate 680/Highway 24 interchange construction area. Their mission: to keep commute traffic moving smoothly by quickly clearing accidents, stalls and debris.

FSP driver By the end of July 2002, the Freeway Service Patrol (FSP) will be operating a fleet of 80-plus vehicles (tow trucks, pick-ups and flatbeds) along some 450 miles of freeway all around the region. The trucks will be deployed wherever and whenever traffic is at its heaviest -- not only during the a.m. and p.m. commute periods, but in some cases in the midday and on Sundays.

In the intervening decade, the "freeway angels" -- as grateful mo- torists have dubbed the FSP -- have provided more than 900,000 assists, from changing flat tires and jump-starting dead batteries (free of charge) to moving everything from abandoned vehicles to escaped pigs off the roadway.

"The FSP is meeting a real need," said Steve Heminger, MTC's executive director. "The overwhelmingly positive reaction we've gotten from the public is one measure of the program's effectiveness; another is the evaluation conducted by the University of California, Berkeley, which found that for every dollar spent on the FSP, we get $11 in benefits." These include a decrease in delay for commuters (and a corresponding increase in productivity) as well as a reduction in fuel used and polluting emissions produced.

In a 10th anniversary present to Bay Area motorists, the FSP is beefing up its service this summer by launching new "beats," adding more trucks and increasing the number of hours the trucks are on the road. Overall, the new weekday and weekend hours will result in a nearly 20 percent increase in the amount of time the region's freeways are being patrolled.

Funded with a mix of federal, state and local moneys, including part of a $1-per-vehicle annual registration fee assessed to Bay Area motorists, the FSP is jointly operated by the MTC Service Authority for Freeways and Expressways, Caltrans and the California Highway Patrol.

The Bay Area FSP program is the second oldest and second largest in the state, after Los Angeles. The specially trained drivers currently stop an average of more than 9,000 times a month to assist stranded motorists and otherwise help to make the region's freeways safer and less congested. They have waded into flood waters to rescue motorists; diverted traffic away from an ongoing crime scene; and pried open the doors of a burning vehicle to free the occupants.

The mission to keep traffic moving has included clearing hundreds of broken wine bottles off the freeway after a delivery truck accident; guiding a runaway, driverless vehicle out of the lanes of traffic and onto the center divide; and helping right a dump truck that had overturned and ob-structed a freeway off-ramp.

"You see all kinds of things out there, from stalled, overheated cars to overturned tractor-trailers to 10-car pileups -- we just try to make sure the roads aren't blocked," commented veteran FSP driver Doug Grafmiller.
-- Réka Goode

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