Mayor Bill White's mandatory freeway towing program has cost the city an estimated $680,000 since it began in January, an administration official told City Council on Wednesday.
The Safe Clear program also cut freeway accidents by nearly 10 percent during in its first four months compared to the same time period in the two previous years, said Richard Lewis, the city's chief information technology officer.
Lewis told the council that the roughly 500 fewer freeway accidents represents millions of dollars of savings in injury, lost wages and other expenses for motorists, according to a study by a Texas Transportation Institute official.
"This is something that we can celebrate," Lewis said.
Lewis' presentation to the council came during a budget hearing in which he estimated that the program would cost about $3 million in free tows and operating expenses in fiscal year 2006, which begins July 1.
Under a revision to the program approved after complaints that it put an unfair burden on poor motorists, the city agreed to pay for short tows to remove disabled cars from freeways. Motorists pay for longer tows to repair facilities or other locations.
Next year's estimated $3 million cost will be funded mostly with the roughly $900,000 that tow truck operators pay the city for exclusive rights to assist motorists on designated freeway segments and a $1.5 million contribution from the Metropolitan Transit Authority, Lewis said. That leaves a net cost to the city of about $600,000 in the next fiscal year.
Tim Lomax of the Texas Transportation Institute and Bob Stein of Rice University, whose wife works in the mayor's administration, told the council that freeway wrecks for the January-April period decreased 9.7 percent from 2004 to this year, from 5,114 to 4,617 .
The presentation came several days after city Controller Annise Parker announced that she would perform a limited financial audit of the program in response to council members' questions about its cost.
Council reaction on Wednesday was mixed. Some praised the program while others questioned the cost or offered concerns about its efficiency.
"For a program that started Jan. 1, we've come a long way," said Councilman Michael Berry, who chairs the council committee that deals with transportation issues.
But Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, whose questions prompted the controller's audit, said the program had "blossomed" into something more costly than she previously envisioned.
