Over at Lone Star Times, Owen Courreges has some thoughts on the problems with $AFEclear:
[…]there is a pernicious belief going around that Safe Clear will actually reduce congestion by limiting the number of wreckers that come to an accident. There are numerous problems with this reasoning. First, Safe Clear applies to situations where no towing is required, namely cases where a person merely has a flat tire. Secondly, having several tow trucks firmly in the shoulder has a minimal effect on traffic flow (and as far as I know, rubber-neckers need little excuse to gawk).
And thirdly, Safe Clear has actually increased the time it takes to tow a vehicle in many cases (to as much as 90 minutes) because the wrecker companies contracted to handle the tows can’t always handle the volume of cars. This means that the cars stay out for longer, possibly offsetting even the modest gains that result from having fewer wreckers respond.
There is one more sticky point here as well, namely that there is no hard, statistical evidence that Safe Clear will reduce congestion. It’s the same with light rail — Bill White tells us that it increases traffic flow, yet he provides no data to back this up. Safe Clear has already been tested, so the data is out there. Why hasn’t White offered proof that it works? The answer is: Because it doesn’t.
