Abandoned Cars Causing Problems
The biggest problem for road crews right now is abandoned vehicles. MoDOT crews tell ABC 17 News they are trying to widen all their roads, but they’re having a hard time getting around vehicles piled up in snow.Road crews are waiting on the towing companies to finish getting the rest of the abandoned cars off the roads. They say that is the only thing stopping them right now from finishing the rest of the plowing. But there were so many, that might not even be finished by Friday. Road crews have been out since early Thursday plowing the roads so drivers can pass. They tell us the first plow on the roads was just to make them passable even if that meant plowing around abandoned cars. Now that it isn’t snowing anymore, they need to go back over those places where the cars were. But the problem is there are still many cars waiting to be towed.”It’s stopping us, we can’t get the road open completely until those cars are moved,” MoDOT engineer Mike Schupp says. “Hopefully that will be done before night fall, if it’s not; we’ll just keep working at it.”Crews tell us they have to go through the 911 center and have them call a tow company. Currently the city has a list of companies it uses. Many drivers we talked to were unaware their cars would even be towed. When they went out to get their cars Friday morning, they were not there.”This morning I got up, I started shoveling, and my next door neighbor down the street gave me a ride to my car which wasn’t there anymore,” Latoyia Edwards says. She is just one of hundreds who were surprised to hear their cars were towed.Edwards tells us she was surprised and extremely upset when she found out her bill was $335. Her car was towed by Slate Towing & Performance. The city says that company was not on-call Thursday or Friday, but because all other towing companies were swamped, the 911 center had to find the first available one. But Edwards still believes that is too much despite the circumstances.”I just think that they were wrong for treating people like that; you know it’s kind of out of our control. I mean if towing is regularly $50-60, okay, add $20 or $30, people can handle that. But $335 – are they serious?,” Edwards explains.ABC 17 News had several complaints about Slate Towing & Performance. One company official told us they did not believe they were overcharging. But the priority right now is to get the roads cleared, and the city is having to use all the tow companies they can to get the cars off the roads.Right now authorities in Columbia use a total of seven companies. This is a list of all the towing places currently used by the city. If your car was towed, Columbia authorities suggest calling those companies first. Those are:Carl’s Towing – (573) 474-4812Doug Perry Towing – (573) 442-4616Slate Towing – (573) 886-3368Tiger Towing – (573 )449-3754Economy Towing – (573) 474-6630I-70 Towing – (573) 449-3336A.J.’s Towing – (573) 814-1842
