Freeway Telephones Needed

After years of being on hold, Orange County’s hopes for installing an emergency telephone network on its freeways, like the one that has been so successful in Los Angeles for the past two decades, now seem within reach.

The Orange County Transportation Commission, at the urging of Commissioners Clarice Blamer and Harriett Wieder, has called for a staff study on a financing arrangement in a new state law authored by Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach). The new law would allow the commission to create a special authority in the county that could levy a $1-per-year fee on vehicle registrations, if the commission’s action was endorsed by the county Board of Supervisors and a majority of cities representing a majority of the county population. The fee would raise about $1.5 million annually, more than enough to cover operating costs and pay off any revenue note or bonded indebtedness the authority may incur in installation costs for freeway call boxes.

County officials have been interested in freeway phones since the 1960s, when Los Angeles became the first (and still only) county in the state to put them into operation. But the county lacked the funds and the state refused to share costs.

The urbanization of the county and growing public demand for emergency phones on the freeways prompted Bergeson to reopen the issue at the state level. The county grand jury gave the drive added impetus last June, urging that call boxes be placed at half-mile intervals along Orange County’s 133-mile freeway network for the safety of motorists.

The value of the call boxes is irrefutable. The Los Angeles call boxes, which are connected directly to the California Highway Patrol’s communications center, provide security for stranded motorists and help save lives by reducing the critical response time of emergency vehicles.

The CHP reports that each month in Los Angeles County about 30,000 motorists use the freeway call boxes. The county grand jury estimated that at least 16,000 motorists a month would use emergency phones in Orange County.

That alone would justify their cost. The commission should make the installation of freeway phones a top priority. But it shouldn’t stop there. It should also consider extending the system by putting call boxes on some of the remote or dangerous state highways in the county, such as Laguna Canyon Road, Ortega Highway and portions of Pacific Coast Highway, which are noted for their heavy traffic and high accident rates.

Many questions must be answered, such as what kind of phone should be used, how far apart they should be and what role private industry should play in the installation and operation of the system. The encouraging thing is that the transportation commission is now asking how best to install the emergency freeway phones, not whether it should.