Really! It does…Mayor White says so:
The number of crashes on Houston freeways dropped 10 percent last year – and Mayor Bill White touted the statistics today as evidence that his Safe Clear mandatory towing program is working.
White, citing with data analyzed by officials at Rice University and the Texas Transportation Institute, told reporters today that the statistics show freeway crashes have dropped from an average of 14,670 a year in 2003 and 2004, to 13,137 in 2005.
“We’re proud of the Safe Clear program,” he said. “It’s the most cost effective, transportation and traffic program we have.”
White has also said he believes the roughly $3 million program, a key portion of the mayor’s mobility efforts, has reduced freeway congestion.
[snip]
The program now gets most of its funding from the Metropolitan Transit Authority. The city’s portion annually is about $600,000, city officials have said.
White acknowledged those opponents at yesterday’s luncheon, saying they fought hard when the mandatory towing program started. They “packed City Hall” and later sued the city, he said, “but we hung in there.”
Did the mayor host a luncheon for SafeClear opponents yesterday?
KEVIN WHITED ADDS: Post hoc ergo propter hoc (hat tip to TP), anyone?
KHOU-11 posts the actual SAFEclear report, and guess who one of the authors is? Yep, one of the designers of the program, Houston bicyclist Bob Stein!
Does anyone really think Bicyclist Stein, the spouse of mayoral aide Marty Stein, was going to conclude his (somewhat modified, thanks to courts) program is anything but brilliant?
UPDATE: KUHF-88.7 adds some comments from a SafeClear opponent:
But Suzanne Poole, president of the Houston Professional Towing Association, says those numbers are misleading.
“The price increase in gas and a lot of people are carpooling or using mass transit which those figures are reflected in how many people are using the buses. But also the wrecker drivers with the SafeClear program no longer call out officers to minor accidents, they simply give them the blue forms to send to the state. If they don’t send those forms in, those accidents aren’t reported. So the actual figures are inaccurate.”
Poole says there’s no way to tell how many accidents were prevented by SafeClear and comparing numbers from the past two years doesn’t give a complete picture of the city’s freeways.
[snip]
The mayor says SafeClear has saved more than $35 million through prevented accidents. That number is calculated using an average total cost of $26,000 per accident and multiplying that by the number of reduced accidents in 2005.
That’s some math!
UPDATE (02-15-2006): The Chronicle has another version of this story posted now. Here is an excerpt on Bicyclist Stein:
Bob Stein, a Rice professor who authored the study with student researcher Danielle Supkis and Tim Lomax of the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University, said the trio only looked at actual crashes.
“I’m not saying the Safe Clear program is responsible,” said Stein, whose wife works in the mayor’s office. “All I’m saying is, since the program was implemented, these facts have occurred.”
Bob Stein also helped design the program. That detail should have been included.
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