MTA Advertises Towing Service It Just Cut Back

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is spending $145,000 on radio ads to promote the Freeway Service Patrol, just months after cutting back the popular emergency tow-truck service.

The ads advise motorists that if their cars break down, they can get help for free. But the spots fail to mention that help is largely limited to the morning and evening rush hour because the transit authority last July eliminated the rescue service between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. except in downtown Los Angeles.

Is this another one of those hard-to-figure MTA decisions, like building a rail line to Redondo Beach but not to LAX?

Not really, said an agency spokesman.

Byron Lee, director of MTA’s highway operations support department, said many motorists were unaware of the service or suspicious of the offers of free assistance.

“We have to spend a lot of time talking to [motorists], saying, ‘It’s free. Really, you don’t have to pay,’ ” Lee said. If tow-truck operators must explain the service, it takes away the time they spend assisting other motorists, officials say.

“In some cases, people have been reluctant to let the service patrol help them,” said MTA spokesman Marc Littman. Officials said money spent on the radio ads would have bought only another month of the midday service anyway.

But the ads bewildered at least one MTA board member. “That sounds like the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing,” said James Cragin.

An MTA panel this week will consider partially restoring the midday service. Cragin, however, said the service should be provided all day long, though an MTA staff member explained that the purpose of the program is to relieve traffic congestion, not to run a tax-supported auto club when the freeways are free-flowing.

Under the $16-million-a-year program begun in 1991, 150 privately operated tow trucks patrol Los Angeles County freeways from 6 to 10 a.m. and 3 to 7 p.m. They remove broken-down vehicles, change tires, make minor repairs and offer a gallon of gas to those who have run out.

The service has been credited with reducing traffic congestion by getting broken-down vehicles off the freeway fast. Last year, more than 300,000 motorists were assisted.

The program was expanded in 1997 to include service between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on about half of the freeway system. But midday service was eliminated last July except in the downtown Los Angeles area.

The budget cut saved about $1.7 million annually--roughly what the MTA spends to build about 30 feet on its $300-million-per-mile subway.

Lee said the agency wanted to determine whether midday service was warranted.

“Is it justified to put midday service out where there’s no traffic congestion?” he asked. “If a stalled vehicle on the side doesn’t impact traffic, then who are we serving other than that motorist?”

Using a Caltrans study of freeway traffic volumes, the MTA staff recommended spending to restore the midday service for the remainder of the fiscal year on freeway segments identified as congested between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., such as the San Diego Freeway between the Ventura Freeway and Los Angeles International Airport.

But the staff did not recommend restoring midday service on a number of other freeways previously served, such as the Hollywood Freeway between downtown Los Angeles and the Ventura Freeway. Officials say that traffic congestion isn’t bad enough in the middle of the day to warrant restoring the service there.

The rescue service is funded by a portion of the county’s penny-on-the-dollar transit sales tax and state funds.