February 9, 2005
Effort to Curb Traffic On Houston Freeways Has Mayor in a Jam
Mandatory Towing Program And Fees Anger Drivers; Mr. Rivera Flees on a
Flat
By THADDEUS HERRICK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
HOUSTON -- Robert Rivera watched the tow truck warily last week as it
pulled in front of his hobbled Ford Thunderbird on U.S. 59. Mr. Rivera
was waiting for his brother-in-law to bring him a spare tire, but time
was running out.
"You know the law," said Gordon Chassin, a short, burly fellow, as he
stepped out of his tow truck.
Under Houston's new Safe Clear program, private tow trucks licensed by
the city have a mandate to tow all stalled vehicles from Houston's
freeways and emergency lanes within minutes of being dispatched by
police. It doesn't matter whether people like Mr. Rivera happen to be
fixing a flat or waiting for a can of gas.
Mr. Rivera's brother-in-law did indeed show up, but with the wrong
tire. So Mr. Rivera, a construction worker on his way to work, played
his last card: To avoid a possible towing charge, he hopped in his car
and sped off on the rim of the wheel, taking the first exit.
In a city where property rights are sacred, such a program is heresy to
some. To others, it is a scheme by the cash-strapped city to raise
revenue at the expense of the poor. State Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston
Democrat, has introduced legislation in Austin to overturn the Safe
Clear ordinance, and a group of tow-truck drivers without deals from
the city have filed a federal lawsuit against it. All the while,
talk-radio shows are up in arms.
"For the government to come in and take your car at gunpoint is wrong,"
says Chris Baker, a radio talk-show host on KTRH, a local AM station.
"It's ugly and corrupt."
"Nobody ought to be able to use the shoulder of the road as their
auto-repair shop," responds Mayor Bill White. Safe Clear has emerged as
the most controversial issue for the mayor, a former businessman and
newcomer to Houston politics who relied on an anti-gridlock platform to
win the 2003 nonpartisan election. Mayor White's pitch to "get Houston
moving" had broad appeal. Polls in Houston show that 87% of workers
drive alone to their jobs, and 43% of Houstonians polled identify
traffic as the city's biggest issue.
But his policies have yielded an avalanche of problems. On Jan. 31, a
77-year-old man who had run out of fuel on Interstate 10 east of
downtown was struck and killed by a car as he ran back to his vehicle
after getting gasoline, apparently to stop a Safe Clear driver from
hauling away his vehicle. More than two dozen tow-truck drivers were
found by a local TV station to have criminal records. And the city has
been towing twice the number of cars it had anticipated -- nearly 5,000
since the first of this year.
Drastic measures to control traffic are nothing new in other parts of
the world. In Mexico City, cars that fail emissions tests have to sit
out one day a week. London charges more than $9 to drive in the central
part of the city. And the Dutch are pushing perhaps the most radical
idea: doing away with signs, pedestrian crossings and traffic lights,
hoping that danger will cause motorists to drive more carefully.
In large U.S. cities, the answer to congestion has long been to build
more freeways, and Houston is doing that. Even so, the city is running
out of space. The Houston area, for example, built 465 lane-miles per
year between 1990 and 1995, according to the Houston-Galveston Area
Council. But between 2000 and 2022, that number is expected to decline
to 265 lane-miles per year.
Meanwhile, there are more vehicles on the road, with families driving
two cars or more, particularly if they have teenagers, according to the
Texas Transportation Institute. In Houston, the number of vehicle-miles
traveled grew 36% between 1990 and 2000 and is forecast to rise an
additional 46% by 2022, to 178 million, according to the council. An
obvious result is congestion.
Mr. White enjoyed a honeymoon at first with his anti-gridlock campaign.
People didn't complain much when he synchronized traffic lights and got
laws passed that will extend parking-meter hours and impose rules on
when trucks are allowed to unload. But the new Safe Clear program
raised cries of protest. "This is the first time he's stumbled," says
Robert Stein a professor of political science at Rice University, who
helped create Safe Clear.
But in a city with inadequate public transportation, Mr. White is
determined to get more cars through existing freeways.
"You can't just build your way out of traffic congestion," says Mr.
White.
That the experiment is playing out in Houston is curious. "A city built
by developers on behalf of the automobile," says Stephen Klineberg, a
sociologist at Rice University, Houston is the nation's largest city
without zoning -- and a monument to unfettered growth. The metro area,
with a population of more than four million, now rivals Los Angeles for
the worst air and has legendary traffic jams.
David Saperstein, chairman of the city's Office of Mobility, says that
60% of freeway mishaps stem from secondary accidents, which are what
Safe Clear is intended to prevent. What's more, he says that for every
minute a car is disabled on the road, it creates up to five minutes of
residual traffic. Until last year, he says, the city did not limit the
number of tow trucks that could respond to a stalled car. That further
slowed traffic and caused more accidents.
So Mr. White and his staff devised a system that relies on 367 cameras
mounted around Houston's 227 miles of freeway. The images are relayed
to a building run by TranStar, an intergovernmental agency that tracks
traffic in a cavernous room that looks a lot like Mission Control at
NASA. From there, Houston police officers identify stalled vehicles and
dispatch private tow trucks.
Last year, the city's pilot program didn't raise hackles. But the first
weeks of the citywide program, which charged all stranded motorists
needing to be towed $75, resulted in a tremendous outcry. One resident
warned the mayor and city council that he would go for his 9mm pistol
should the city try to tow his pickup. Others bemoaned the impact on
the poor, who would have their cars impounded if they couldn't come up
with the tow money.
"What commandment prohibits helping motorists in distress?" wondered
the Houston Chronicle, in an editorial.
Under fire, Mr. White backtracked. Last week, the city council amended
the ordinance to allow free tows of up to a mile -- and free tire
changes -- for motorists who can maneuver their cars into emergency
lanes. But the city will charge $75 for tows of up to five miles, or
for motorists stuck in traffic lanes, and almost twice that for cars
abandoned on the freeways. In most cases, motorists agree to be dropped
at nearby gas stations or repair shops, though abandoned vehicles can
still be impounded, as can cars involved in accidents.
Now Mr. White must prepare for two more challenges, one of them the
lawsuit filed by a group of tow-truck drivers and the other from state
legislators who say the city has no right to use state highways as a
revenue source.
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