More Bob Stein -- this time on SAFEclear
Bloomberg.com is running a fawning SAFEclear story:
Tow trucks are doing what politicians can only hope to achieve with billions of dollars in transportation spending: easing traffic congestion in Houston, the fourth-largest U.S. city.
A program to clear disabled vehicles from freeways during peak travel times eliminated 1.8 million hours of delays since starting in January, according to a report last week by the Texas Transportation Institute and Rice University. Accidents dropped by almost 10 percent. Commuters saved $70 million in lost time and collision-related costs, the report said.
``People were 2-to-1 against the program,'' said Bob Stein, a Rice professor who has studied Houston traffic for more than 20 years. ``They are now 2-to-1 for it. They have seen results.''
Bob Stein is EVERYWHERE! Now, Stein doesn't just study Houston traffic (and of course, his wife works for Mayor White); he helped design SAFEClear. And not only did Stein help design the original SAFEclear, but in January he let slip the true purpose behind the plan:
Stein said the biggest factor in determining how much towing companies bid for their segments was not the expected number of tows or miles of freeway, but the average age of vehicles there.
Vehicles on the city's largely industrial east side average about 4 years older than those in the affluent western suburbs, he said.
Stein's conclusion: "Tows were not the driving force in the bidding."
On the west side, he said, "it was the opportunity to make referrals for repairs." On the east side, the tow operator's profits are likely to come from storage lots and reselling impounded vehicles whose owners cannot afford to pay the fees, he said.
None of that is in the Bloomberg story. But this is:
Stein, the Rice professor, said results have won over many of the people who opposed Safe Clear. Traffic congestion is a perennial sore point for people in Houston, which ranks fifth in the U.S. for time wasted in traffic.
No source is given for Stein's repeated pronouncements that "people" have been won over by SAFEclear.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 06/17/05 08:47 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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