Abandoned Cars Are a Heap of Trouble, Hence the Fee

Dear Street Smart:

I read about a $1-per-year fee being added to the Department of Motor Vehicles registration fees for Orange County residents. It was being added to compensate the county and cities for expenses incurred by towing away abandoned vehicles.

Unless I’m missing something here, when an abandoned car gets towed, if the owner does not recover it and pay towing and storage fees, the car is lien-sold after a required number of days.

Either the fees paid or proceeds from a sale should cover costs, so why are we being jabbed for a buck?

Jerry Bernheimer Santa Ana You’re right. Car owners do have to pay storage fees when they claim their towed vehicles, and towing companies can sell abandoned cars to recover costs. However, most abandoned cars aren’t too valuable, no one claims them and lien sales bring in little money, according to Todd Murphy, special projects manager with the Orange County Transportation Authority.

“Most abandoned vehicles are junkers, as you might imagine. No one is going to leave their Porsche out,” Murphy said.

Most cities allow a particular towing company to remove cars after an accident, but for providing this service, the company must also agree to haul away abandoned vehicles, Murphy said. The companies take a loss on these vehicles for the opportunity to make money from their accident work, he said.

Beyond that, police departments lose manpower hours when removing abandoned vehicles, Murphy said. It takes two to three hours of work for a car to be towed, he said.

For example, when a complaint comes in, an officer must go out and tag the vehicle. Someone must contact the Department of Motor Vehicles to see if the owner can be found. If, after a certain time period--usually 72 hours--the car has not been claimed, then an officer must go out and witness the towing, Murphy said.

With the new DMV fee, cities will receive a slice of revenues depending on how many cars are towed to reimburse them for the cost. This may encourage cities to be more aggressive in removing vehicles, Murphy said, or it may allow them to use the reimbursement for other needs within the city.

In 1989, 43,000 abandoned cars were removed at a cost of $1.4 million, Murphy said. The new fee will generate $1.9 million--an excess caused by the DMV requirement that extra fees be tacked on in whole dollars, Murphy said.

Orange County is the first county to adopt such a program. It would be better, of course, for the people who abandon cars to fork over the money for removal. But as Murphy points out: “They’re pretty much deadbeats anyway, and you’re not going to find them.”

If it makes you feel better, the fee program is only authorized by the state for five years. And maybe there will be fewer cars making neighborhoods look bad.

“Abandoned cars are unsightly, they’re unsafe and they’re just not a good thing to have out there,” Murphy said.

Dear Street Smart:

I think the new car-pool lanes on the San Diego Freeway through Irvine are great. The only problem is when you get stuck behind a slow-moving driver. There appears to be enough room available to create a car-pool passing lane. (These passing lanes already exist, to some degree, at entrances and exits to the car-pool lanes.)

Is it possible to repaint these lanes to accommodate those who want to pass?

Chuck Corpening El Toro There’s a reason for all of that unused space between the car-pool lane and the regular freeway lanes--it’s an experimental buffer zone.

The lane buffer is part of an ongoing demonstration project that seeks to determine if the extra space effectively cuts down on accidents and keeps solo drivers and other cheaters from cutting across the double yellow lines and into the car-pool lane.

The double lanes you’ve spotted are another part of the project. Dubbed “weave lanes,” they’re in place to give cars entering or exiting the car-pool lane a chance to speed up or slow down.

Until the experiment is concluded in a few years, don’t expect any changes. And if the tests find that the buffer zone is effective, it’ll probably be there for good.

Street Smart appears Mondays in The Times Orange County Edition. Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about traffic, commuting and what makes it difficult to get around in Orange County. Include simple sketches if helpful. Letters will be published in upcoming columns. Please write to Danny Sullivan, c/o Street Smart, The Times Orange County, P.O. Box 2008, Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626. Include your full name, address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be edited, and no anonymous letters will be accepted.