Yellow call boxes marked by blue signs have lined California’s freeways for decades. But with the rise of cellphones, the emergency roadside phones have become a costly relic, and Orange County officials this month decided to retire them. The Orange County Transportation Authority plans to discontinue service at the call boxes along its freeways by the end of June 2027 as a cost-saving measure. The associated roadside assistance service for stranded drivers, which rolled out in Orange County in 1987, now costs about $1,337 per call.
“While the need for safe, reliable roadside assistance hasn’t changed, the way people access help has,” Transportation Authority spokesperson Eric Carpenter told SFGATE in an email Thursday. “We’re focusing on modern tools like 511 and freeway service patrols to deliver faster service while reducing the need for drivers to leave their vehicles in potentially dangerous conditions.”
Within a year of the 1987 call box rollout in the county, 11,000 calls were being made per month, according to the Orange County Register Tuesday, but by 2015 that number had dropped to 205 calls a month. And as over the years use of the call boxes declined, the county went from a network of 1,200 call boxes in the 1990s to just 175 call boxes now, the outlet reported. According to an April 6 Transportation Authority staff report, Orange County drivers pay for call boxes and other roadside assistance services with a $1 fee tacked on to their vehicle registration…