Call box cuts: Culling of Bay Area freeway aids

Cars whiz past a call box alongside freeway 101 in San Francisco Calif, on Friday, April 29, 2011. Cars whiz past a call box alongside freeway 101 in San Francisco Calif, on Friday, April 29, 2011. Photo: Alex Washburn, The Chronicle Photo: Alex Washburn, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Call box cuts: Culling of Bay Area freeway aids 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Drivers unfortunate enough to break down on Bay Area freeways will still be able to summon help in the new year on one of those bright yellow emergency call boxes, but they might have to walk farther to find one.

Beginning in January and continuing through the year, construction crews will dismantle and remove 432 of the region's 2,200 call boxes and their blue-and-white identifying signs. They'll be replaced - on the same posts - with signs advising motorists to call 511 Freeway Assist, a service that connects them with the same help center.

"The same services are available anyplace when you have a cell phone by calling 511 and asking for 'freeway assistance' or 'freeway aid,' " said John Goodwin, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which runs the call box and other roadside-safety programs, including the roving white Freeway Service Patrol tow trucks.

In the more urban parts of the Bay Area, every other call box will be removed.

Now that nearly everyone has a cell phone, and freeways are monitored by cameras, cruising tow trucks and the California Highway Patrol, call box use has plummeted. A study commissioned by the MTC two years ago when it approved a plan to thin the network of call boxes found that the number of calls declined by about 80 percent over the prior decade.

With the motoring public less reliant on call boxes, the idea is to shift more funding to the Freeway Service Patrol, whose 85 tow and service trucks rove 540 miles of highways in the nine-county Bay Area during peak travel times.

"People need to know they're not getting less," said Randy Rentschler, a commission spokesman. "They're getting something different. They're getting the white tow trucks."

The plan is to eliminate most of the call boxes in urban areas, keeping them evenly distributed about 2 miles apart instead of 1 mile. Heavily used boxes, regardless of location, will be retained. In rural areas, call boxes will be removed where cell phone service is robust and the Freeway Service Patrol trucks roam in large numbers, Goodwin said.

Two places call boxes won't disappear: bridges and tunnels. The new Bay Bridge eastern span, including the bike path, and the new Devil's Slide and Caldecott tunnels are outfitted with numerous well-marked call boxes, and the devices are being added to other bridges and tunnels, Goodwin said.

The call boxes, emergency call center and white tow trucks are funded with $1 tacked on to every car registration in the Bay Area. In November, the commission awarded a $191,000 contract to McGuire Pacific Constructors to handle the box removal and sign installation. The commission's action two years ago called for eventually removing about 750 boxes, saving about $1.9 million over 10 years.

While the roadside phones will become less common, they won't disappear, Rentschler said.

"They're not going to zero," he said. "Not everyone has a cell phone, and the call boxes are a good public service."