TRAFFIC-JAM RADIO TIPS FROM THE DRIVER’S SEAT

Liz Henderson probably understands the stop-and-go currents of the mammoth Los Angeles freeway system as well as anyone.

She rolls up more than 6,000 miles a month in her Dodge Turbo Lancer to meet sales appointments all over the Southland. Evading congestion is vital, so she relies on KNX-AM (1070) traffic guru Bill Keene to warn her of three-car pileups and loose loads of lumber.

And when Henderson runs into a traffic jam that Keene hasn’t reported, she alerts him, using the cellular car phone she had installed last year.

Henderson is part of KNX News Radio’s Traffic Tipster Team of about 2,500 regulars, whose determination to report freeway mishaps is matched only by rival KFWB’s 4,000-member Mobile Phone Force.

Both stations have plunged hood first into this latest game of audience-participation newscasts and both claim that the city’s freeways probably run a little more smoothly for it.

KFWB conceived the idea first in response to complaints that listeners had found themselves stuck on the freeway because the station either hadn’t reported a particular accident or did report tie-ups that had never really been there at all. KFWB executives tried to help by calling in trouble on their own mobile phones as they drove to and from work each day. These chance eyewitness reports worked so well that, early last year, they decided to open the game to everyone.

In exchange for on-air promotion, PacTel agreed to stuff applications to join the Mobile Phone Force in its monthly phone billings. Before long, thousands of KFWB listeners had their own identification card and access to a special phone line that accepts their freeway reports anytime between 5 a.m. and midnight.

“The phone rings off the hook, all day long,” says Rhonda Kramer, whose company, L.A. Network, answers these calls. She contracts with KFWB, airing her live traffic reports for the station every 10 minutes.

“At first I thought we would have a problem with bogus information, but we never did,” she said. “These people beat the California Highway Patrol reports about half the time. They really help us keep track of what’s going on out there.”

And they do it without any real reward. Callers with hot information hear their name read out over the air, and each month KFWB holds a drawing to award one lucky participant a new pair of stereo headphones or a weekend in Palm Springs.

KNX tipsters don’t get premiums, but they don’t seem to mind. They do it, some say, for the thrill of hearing their names on the radio. Others participate just for the chance to play with their expensive car toy. And many say they call for the pure satisfaction of being a good citizen.

“I figure that Bill Keene and Donna Dower in her helicopter have saved me a bundle by getting me to appointments on time,” says Liz Henderson. “They’ve saved me more than I could ever spend calling them as a tipster. I guess they are my charity of the year.”

She is only one of about 500 dependable tipsters whom Keene knows by name. He estimates that he has another 2,500 listeners who call him on occasion, mostly, he says, to blow off steam or ask him why “they aren’t going anywhere on the southbound 405.”

Keene’s system is slightly less formal than KFWB’s. He simply broadcasts his phone number, and then gets more action than he can handle. Often his regular traffic spots will include an aside reporting that “tipster John Doe is stuck at such and such a spot and doesn’t know why. Call me if you know what the problem is.”

Within seconds, Keene will have a reliable answer.

“I sit here in a cage and don’t see anything of the freeway,” Keene says, “so the tipsters are like having another eye. They are my only salvation on days when the airplane can’t fly.”

Though Keene is the veteran of L.A. traffic reporting, his platoon of tipsters is actually the new kid on the block. The KNX team was organized when Mac Barnes, the guy Keene calls his East Side Spy, received an application to join KFWB’s phone force in his cellular phone bill.

Barnes, a banker who spends more than four hours a day commuting between Redlands and downtown Los Angeles, said to himself, “If another station can do it, why can’t mine?” He discussed the idea with Keene, who initially found KNX management a bit leery. But six months ago, as they watched the ranks of their competitor’s mobile phone force swell, the KNX bosses decided to let their listeners participate.

Barnes calls Keene twice each morning and afternoon with routine reports from the San Bernardino Freeway. When things get real crazy out there, Barnes says without shame, the East Side Spy is not averse to calling KFWB too. In an age when drivers regularly curse each other through rolled-up windows, Barnes remains nothing less than the commuter’s best friend. And it seems that most of these amateur traffic reporters share the East Side Spy’s freeway altruism--they do it simply to be helpful.

The fact that neither station offers remuneration for calls makes it tough to lure an exclusive army of on-the-spot freeway scouts. KNX has tried to pay for tipsters’ calls, but it is difficult to reverse the charges from a cellular phone.

“So there are probably a bunch of moles out there who go both ways (reporting to KNX and KFWB),” Keene says.

If his tipsters are anything like Liz Henderson, however, he has nothing to worry about. She insists that she would never dream of calling anyone other than Keene, even though KFWB prides itself on developing “the first and more official mobile phone force.” When it sometimes costs as much as $2 per call to phone in another traffic mess, few freeway informants seem willing to systematically alert even one other radio station.

Though none of the other local stations has any official traffic program yet, mobile phone reporting has caught on big in San Francisco and Boston.

And still, L.A. Network’s Kramer says, a good percentage of drivers everywhere forget that when she reports “a stall in the No. 1 lane,” it means there is a car stuck in the fast lane, not the slow lane--which makes it easy to understand why, even with all these Good Samaritans calling from their cars, most people still get stuck in traffic an average of twice a day.