As Anne Linehan noted earlier, Mayor White has announced changes to the controversial SAFEclear program that has been a hot topic on talk radio and blogs (especially this one) for over a week now.
The original, draconian program called for near-immediate towing of any disabled vehicle on Houston freeways regardless of the extent of the disablement for a non-negotiable fee of $75. Motorists without $75 would suffer vehicle seizure and accrue additional administrative and impound fees, in some cases for a simple flat tire. We later learned from advisor and Rice University Professor Bob Stein that towing companies actually anticipated seizure and reselling of vehicles as part of their incentive for bidding for SAFEclear permits, which he said netted the city $1 million in new revenues.
All along, Mayor White, traffic czar Saperstein, and Councilman Berry have contended that the SAFEclear program is absolutely necessary for reasons of public safety and to improve mobility. Conservative talk radio host Dan Patrick backed them on this contention.
From the start, we questioned the absolute necessity of the program, instead speculating that the new revenue stream played a significant part in the program’s development. Otherwise, why not expand the successful Motorist Assistance Program (MAP) instead of bilking a motorist who might be out of gas $75 for a tow (and impounding the vehicle if the motorist didn’t have the cash)? The only answer we could come up with was that wrecker companies wouldn’t pay the city for the privilege of NOT making money off those sorts of motorists (and, as Professor Stein later revealed, we were not off base).
The revised SAFEclear program will now provide a “free” short-distance tow to motorists who make it to the emergency lanes and remain with their vehicles. If they have a simple mechanical failure (tire or gas), the wrecker service will provide that assistance as well. Motorists will not be charged $75 for these services, but the wrecker companies will receive $50 from the city for such tows. Mayor White estimates that the $50 reimbursements will run the city $300,000 annually.
This revision is a major improvement over the initial version. Like Rob Booth, I’d like city officials to provide more evidence that this is the pressing safety issue they’ve asserted it is. But, assuming it is a pressing public safety issue in which the needs of the public outweigh other concerns (which is what Mayor White, Czar Saperstein, Dan Patrick, and other defenders of the program said all last week), then certainly it is reasonable to expect public funds to be expended to “solve” said public safety problem.
It was not reasonable for city planners to fund the program partially on the backs of people who couldn’t afford the $75 tow fee (for a flat tire or running out of gas!), yet we know from Professor Stein that planners knew that anticipated profits from impounding and reselling vehicles of people in that predicament were part of the profit motive for wreckers who bid for SAFEclear permits. That didn’t play well politically among Houstonians with a sense of fairness, nor did the suggestion that people could just stick to the side streets if they didn’t like it.
This is most certainly not the program I would have designed and I don’t call myself a supporter of SAFEclear, but I will credit Mayor White, Czar Saperstein, Councilman Berry, and other elected leaders for working quickly to improve a program that started with major flaws. The former mayor would have skipped town for a foreign “business development” junket, councilmembers would have fanned out to talk radio to blast him, and bad policy would have remained in place. Instead, these guys were meeting and talking and listening to citizens (Anne even got a call from one official, suggesting that blogs are now fully engaged in Houston politics).
Furthermore, if my math is correct, it seems to me that Mayor White managed to create a new revenue stream of $1 million for the city for the SAFEclear wrecker permits, and that even if the “free” towing costs the city $300,000, that’s still a fair chunk of new revenue for the city. I’m not a fan of the mayor’s creation of such new revenue streams, but it’s hard to find fault with him for getting wrecker companies effectively to (over)fund a program that he contends will have a dramatic impact on public safety and mobility.
Still, we’ll be eagerly awaiting those statistics on safety and mobility related to this program some months from now.
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