Countywide : New Financing Plan for Call Box System Studied

The Orange County Transportation Commission on Monday asked its staff to study a new financing technique that the commission hopes will help the county pay for installation of emergency call boxes on the county’s 135 miles of freeway.

Commission member Clarice Blamer asked the commission’s staff to study how the county can use a state law that takes effect on Jan. 1 to raise approximately $1.5 million a year by adding up to $1 to the price of renewing the license and registration on vehicles registered in the county.

The county Board of Supervisors has been considering installing call boxes on the county’s freeway system since the 1960s but, according to Blamer, the county has been unable to raise the money to install a system.

In June, the county grand jury recommended to the Board of Supervisors that call boxes be installed, despite the estimated costs of $3 million to $9 million.

Los Angeles is the only county in the state with a full-scale emergency phone system. The system--3,500 phones at one-quarter mile intervals--was installed a decade ago and paid for by Los Angeles County. Don Royce of the Los Angeles Police Department said that 60,000 to 70,000 calls are logged every month from motorists in trouble. Sixty-eight percent of those calls come from call boxes.

Phyllis Priest of the California Highway Patrol’s Santa Ana office estimates that the CHP receives approximately 18,750 calls a month for freeway emergencies in Orange County.

Several feasibility studies by the county General Services Agency have shown varying costs for the system, depending on the number of call boxes and the type of phones used.

The county’s May, 1985, study compared the costs of installing 968 call boxes at quarter-mile intervals. Two types of systems were considered: cellular phones or hard-wire phones. Hard-wire phones, like those in homes or business, transmit signals through traditional telephone wire; cellular phones, often used in cars, transmit messages through a honeycomb of radio transmitters.

According to Randy Roth, a telephone specialist for the county, the hard-wire system has an installation cost of $9.2 million. Because no phone lines would have to be laid, installation of a cellular system would cost $3.6 million, but the operating cost is more, Roth said.

“At the time of the study,” Roth said, “we recommended cellular (phones) because of the lesser one-time charges involved. I think the county would still favor that system.”

Tom Fortune of the Transportation Commission said the commission’s staff will study the new law, Senate Bill 1199, to see if the money it provides is enough to build the system and whether the county can issue bonds before receiving the money so that the entire phone system can be built at one time. The commission is basing its study on the installation of 500 to 800 call boxes.

A report and recommendations will be presented to the Transportation Commission at its Jan. 13 meeting.