County Awards Freeway Phone Contract : Laguna Hills Firm to Start Installing 1,000 Boxes by September

Orange County’s first freeway emergency call boxes will be available to stranded motorists by September under a $4.7-million contract awarded Monday to a Laguna Hills firm.

A thousand call boxes, to be installed at the rate of about 75 to 120 per month, are expected to be in place on freeways in the county within a year to 18 months. Initially, transportation officials said, the boxes will be placed at half-mile intervals on the county’s 135-mile freeway system, starting at the Los Angeles County line and working toward the center of Orange County.

Eventually, the telephone boxes will be at quarter-mile intervals, officials said.

Acting as the county’s so-called Service Authority for Freeway Emergencies, members of the Orange County Transportation Commission voted 6-0 Monday to award the freeway telephone installation contract to Cellular Communications Corp.

The firm was recommended over two rival companies--Cubic Communications and Tel-Con Inc.--by a 10-person evaluation team appointed by county transportation commissioners.

Lowest Bid Rejected

Cubic’s bid, the lowest among the three finalists, was $3.7 million. However, OCTC spokesman Tom Fortune said the bid was rejected because the firm was about a year behind Cellular Communications in product development and had less experience.

Fortune said Tel-Con’s $11-million bid for a non-cellular system was rejected because of the cost.

Fortune said Cellular Communications also was awarded a 10-year, $1.7-million maintenance contract to service the call boxes.

Los Angeles has been the only county in the state with a full-scale emergency phone system. The system--3,500 phones at quarter-mile intervals--was installed a decade ago. The Los Angeles system logs about 70,000 calls per month.

The California Highway Patrol estimates that it receives about 19,000 to 20,000 calls a month for freeway emergencies in Orange County.

San Diego County is proceeding with a call box plan similar to Orange County’s.

The call box projects in both counties are being financed through special legislation that authorizes a $1-a-year surcharge collected by the state on local vehicle registrations and funneled to each county’s Service Authority for Freeway Emergencies.