Emergency Phones to Be Placed Along 3 Highways

Help will be a phone call away on some of the loneliest stretches of Ventura County highway next year when the state completes installation of 100 emergency phone boxes, the first to be placed outside the county’s freeway system, authorities said Monday.

A panel of county officials voted last week to install the phones along three state highways: California 118 between Moorpark and Saticoy, California 126 between Santa Paula and the Los Angeles County line, and California 1 from Mugu Rock to the freeway portion of the road.

Ventura County freeways already have call boxes, stationed at half-mile intervals and financed by a $1 surcharge on vehicle-registration fees. Last year, the Legislature approved a bill allowing the emergency phones on roadways other than freeways.

“It’s pretty clear that a lot of counties . . . have a lot of conventional highways in the middle of nowhere,” said Chris Stephens, senior planner for the Ventura County Transportation Commission.

So for the first time in 18 months, a panel of local elected officials known as the Service Authority for Freeway Emergencies met last week to designate the new areas for call boxes in Ventura County. The work, expected to be completed in a year, will cost about $250,000, or $2,500 per phone.

The three stretches chosen by the authority are mostly two-lane roads through rural areas. On California 118, for example, there are few farmhouses or businesses where a stranded motorist could seek help.

It is also the kind of place that is patrolled less by law enforcement authorities, said Jan Carr, a supervisor at the California Highway Patrol’s Ventura dispatch center. “There’s nothing out there. People could sit there for ages. There’s not a lot of places for people to call.”

Carr said about 90 people a day use the 394 phones installed along the county’s freeways. “About 95% of them are people who need roadside service,” she said. Sometimes people use the phones to report accidents or drunk drivers.

Heavily traveled portions of the Ventura Freeway account for most of the calls, Carr said, especially along the Conejo Grade and in Thousand Oaks.

Dispatchers usually send a tow truck to help, Carr said, but if a motorist wants a relative to bring tools, the dispatcher usually will pass on the message. She said, however, “We don’t like citizens on the freeway. But some people can’t afford a tow truck.”

For non-English-speaking callers, Carr said, dispatchers have a translation service available. “The problem is, you have to be able to identify the language,” she said. “Sometimes you can’t. In that case, we always send a unit because you can get a lot done with the hands that you can’t do over the phone.”

CHP officers also are sent whenever a woman calls after dark, Carr said.

Occasionally, people misuse the service, Carr said. “Some people think it’s a regular phone. We’re limited to roadside assistance. Don’t call and ask us to tell your boss you’ll be late.”

The phones are solar-powered and have rechargeable batteries for nighttime use. They connect with the CHP dispatch center through cellular telephone networks, a system that doesn’t work in mountainous areas.

The emergency call-box system is impractical in some areas of the county because mountains block cellular phone signals, Stephens said. “The most obvious is Route 1 south of Mugu Rock. Once you make that turn and head toward L.A., it just goes black.”

Another area where cellular phones don’t work, he said, is California 33 in the mountains north of Ojai.

Stephens expects problems installing the phones on two-lane highways because some stretches lack room for motorists to pull over safely. “We can’t put them in locations where a person is in danger of being hit or sliding down an embankment,” Stephens said. As much as possible, he said, the phones should be accessible to disabled motorists.

The county agency also will have to work around construction scheduled along California 118 and 126, he said.

If any phones are left after the three new stretches are covered, more call boxes might be installed on the Conejo Grade portion of the Ventura Freeway, Stephens said.

Also, having phones at quarter-mile intervals on the steep grade might cut down on the tendency of motorists with disabled cars to engage in the dangerous practice of coasting, sometimes backward, to a call box, Stephens said.