Countywide : Installation of Call Boxes Nearly Done

The county is finishing a six-month project to put emergency call boxes on freeways.

Installing 48 phones on the Santa Paula Freeway is to be done this week, said Al Knuth, a public works official.

Work on the only such thoroughfares remaining, the Ojai Freeway and a short section of the Pacific Coast Freeway, is expected to be completed next week.

Cubic Communications Corp. of San Diego began installing the solar-powered call boxes in November, Knuth said. The telephone system cost about $1 million and will include 384 boxes; about 300 are now in service.

Ventura is the fourth California county to install emergency call boxes. Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties have similar systems. Several other counties are installing their own.

A 1986 state law allows counties to charge motorists $1 per registered vehicle for installation and maintenance of the boxes. Since November, 1986, Ventura County has collected more than $1 million from the fees.

The boxes are placed at quarter- and half-mile intervals and are powered by solar cells during the day and batteries at night. Lifting the telephone receiver places a call to the California Highway Patrol.

Since the call boxes became operational in November, the CHP has averaged about 2,000 calls a month, spokeswoman Jann Carr said.

“About all of them are motorist service calls, but occasionally we do get an emergency,” she said.

Two months ago two people were killed in an accident on the Ventura Freeway just east of the Santa Barbara County line.

“We got a call about a minute and a half after the accident because someone used a call box,” Carr said. “Who can tell? It may have saved the lives of other people in the accident.”