$AFEclear, con't.
Tow truck drivers think they are getting a bum rap, with the uproar over $AFEclear, as Houston-area citizens express their displeasure with the program:
Houston's simmering ambivalence toward wreckers boiled over last week as Mayor Bill White's Safe Clear effort to free highways of disabled vehicles rolled into high gear. Talk radio and computer chat rooms hummed with disdain for White's program, dismissing tow-truck drivers as "vultures" and warning out-of-town motorists to avoid Houston.
As wreckers hauled away about 100 vehicles daily, one chat room visitor suggested that motorists taunt tow-truck drivers by parking their cars en masse in highway breakdown lanes.
"As soon as (the driver) starts walking up to your car, take off as fast as you can," he wrote. "If enough people agree to do this all at once, it would be hilarious."
Yes, the internet is humming with this. It's a nice outlet for people who previously were limited in how they could express themselves. Not every caller can get on a talk radio show and not every letter to the editor gets published.
Toward the end of the Chronicle article, the city's traffic Czar is quoted:
David Saperstein, the mayor's mobility chairman, credited the Safe Clear ordinance with ending the "craziness" of numerous and unnecessary wreckers responding to highway accidents. Officers now specify how many tow trucks are needed; the trucks then are dispatched by the wrecker company serving that stretch of highway.
The ordinance also allows police to specify the number of wreckers needed for incidents on city streets, but with multiple towing companies in each of the city's five towing zones, it does not preclude competing wreckers racing to the scene to be first.
Roving wreckers contracted to travel designated routes are responsible for removing disabled vehicles from highways — the ordinance's most controversial aspect.
"The fact of this ordinance is that it's improving traffic," Saperstein said, noting that statistics should show that in about three months. "No one is telling that story."
When the mayor was on Chris Baker's show last week, he also mentioned that $AFEclear has solved the problem of too many wreckers rushing to the scene of an accident. But is this highly punitive, forced-towing program the ONLY way the tow truck problem could be solved? Really? The city can pass a bill where a private citizen's car can be forcibly taken from him, but the city can't do anything to better control the wrecker chaos on the highways? What do other Texas cities do?
Then, of course, Saperstein starts in on the talking points, the same talking points the mayor likes to use, whenever possible. I heard Mayor White use this particular talking point on Dan Patrick's show last Friday (and he used it in his interview with Chris Baker, too). It's the talking point that says this ordinance is improving traffic. The mayor told Patrick that all the traffic reporters in town were telling him that traffic was moving better because of $AFEclear's forced towing. Saperstein says that no one is talking about the improving traffic situation, but also says the city should have the statistics in about three months.
Well then, how can the improving traffic story be told if the statistics aren't yet available?
The other question is, where are the numbers from the nine months of the Katy Freeway experiment? Are there any? If the city won't release them, the question is why? Did the numbers not show any improvement? Or did no one think to do a study?
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 01/09/05 09:36 AM | Print |
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