Tow and go

Free towing is a good investment, and it’s a proven way to make freeways safer.

Anything that eases traffic jams around Houston is good news.

That’s why every frustrated driver fighting the daily stop-and-go battles on our freeways should welcome a recent announcement about a plan that will make commuting around our city faster and safer. The Houston-Galveston Area Council has launched what it’s calling the Gulf Coast Regional Tow and Go program, which is now providing vehicles that break down on Houston freeways with free tow truck service.

The program is set to expand around Harris County by early next year, then spread to surrounding counties. As it grows, officials spearheading this effort will need authorizations from a laundry list of city and county governments. Local authorities should clear the road of bureaucratic hurdles and expedite the adoption of this service throughout the greater Houston area.

This idea works, a simple fact that was proven more than a decade ago. With traffic troubles consistently ranking among the top issues on the minds of Houstonians, former mayor Bill White launched what was called Safe Clear in 2005. The original plan called for wreckers to quickly haul stalled cars off freeways, slapping drivers with towing charges even if they had just pulled over to change a flat tire. After a firestorm of controversy, the embattled mayor came up with what turned out to be a great idea: the city government would pay for free towing service.

Using traffic cameras to watch for problems on freeways, dispatchers ordered tow trucks to assist stranded motorists. Drivers whose cars broke down were surprised that wrecker drivers quickly came to their rescue and hauled them off the road — up to a mile away — for free. Motorists who ran out of gas were towed to the nearest service station. Instead of dangerously raising their cars on jacks next to speeding traffic, people who suffered flats on freeways were towed to side streets where wrecker drivers changed their tires.

Broadcasters monitoring rush hour congestion for radio and television stations immediately noticed a change. “Absolutely,” recalls longtime local traffic reporter Darby Douglas. “It was a huge difference.” Instead of watching traffic back up behind stalled cars, they saw disabled vehicles swiftly removed from roads and residual congestion dissolve. The faster a stalled car was pulled off the freeway – even from the shoulder – the less likely it was to cause congestion or trigger an accident.

Those anecdotal observations were backed up by solid evidence. Rice University researchers repeatedly crunched data and concluded that Safe Clear not only hastened traffic flow, it also significantly reduced the number of wrecks caused by stranded vehicles. A joint study by Rice and Texas A&M concluded the number of freeway crashes dropped by 10 percent during Safe Clear’s first year, saving drivers an estimated $35 million.

The program wasn’t cheap, though, eventually costing about $3.5 million a year. Budget constraints in 2010 led the city to begin charging stranded motorists a subsidized rate of $50 for what used to be free tows. But Houston’s experiment with free towing – and its proven impact on safety and traffic congestion – caught a lot of attention.

Now the Federal Highway Administration and the Texas Department of Transportation have decided to fund a free towing service to haul stranded motorists to safety. They quietly rolled out the program in May and spent a few weeks working on it before making a formal announcement last week.

What once was a Houston plan for fighting traffic congestion has proven so successful it’s now going region-wide. It’s a good investment, a proven way to make freeways safer and less congested throughout the Houston area. The more miles the program can cover, the better.

The program is set to expand around Harris County by early next year.