A Break on Freeway Breakdowns : Traffic: Caltrans springs for towing off the Santa Ana to relieve snarls during widening. It works elsewhere, and officials say ‘Orange Angels’ will pay off.

Hoping to relieve traffic snarls during the massive Santa Ana Freeway widening project, Caltrans plans to inaugurate free emergency tow service on Tuesday.

The state Department of Transportation has even picked a catchy name for the tow truck crews: the Orange Angels.

Similar free towing service was provided during the recent repaving of the Ventura Freeway in the San Fernando Valley, and is part of the current Harbor Freeway transit-way construction project.

“It has worked really well,” said Caltrans spokeswoman Selma Gleason in Los Angeles. “It definitely was a good thing to do.”

During a 16-week period, the tow trucks on the Ventura Freeway handled 1,198 vehicles at a total cost of $221,373 to Caltrans, officials said. The towing contract cost Caltrans about $184.79 per response, said Caltrans traffic manager Larry Hathaway.

Up to three tow trucks patrolled around the clock, and the service received high marks from stranded motorists. Moreover, Hathaway said, response time was only 10 minutes or less in 69% of the incidents.

Surprisingly, only 4% of the responses involved accidents, with the rest distributed among mechanical, tire, electrical, fuel and cooling system problems.

“In the vast majority of the cases the tow truck was there before the motorist had a chance to call anyone,” Hathaway said.

Private tow truck operators have been hired to provide the service, but Caltrans officials declined to provide other details of the Orange County project until Tuesday.

In the San Fernando Valley, two tow truck companies complained about Caltrans taking some of their business away, Hathaway said. They were particularly upset that they had not been notified that the Caltrans contract was up for bid.

The $1.6-billion Santa Ana Freeway widening project will double the highway’s width from six lanes to 12, with a special transit-way reserved for buses, car pools and van pools. Part of the project also involves widening the Costa Mesa Freeway approaches to the Santa Ana-Costa Mesa freeway interchange, and rebuilding that structure.

Although some of the work has been completed or is under way, large portions of the project are not expected to be completed until the late 1990s.

Efforts already under way to reduce disruptions caused by the freeway work include radio broadcasts of road conditions and ramp closures and letters and maps of alternate routes sent to area residents. Additional passenger trains are also being planned.