Stretch of I-55 to get cable median barrier
Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/235589/
A cable median barrier will go up on Interstate 55 in Crittenden County, thanks to a $ 1. 5 million grant from a federal transportation program aimed at making rural roads safer.
The grant to the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department was among grants worth $ 14. 7 million going to 14 states, three counties and two parishes.
The money will allow the department to install a cable median barrier on nine miles of I-55 from near Jericho to the U. S. 63 interchange at Lake David. Cable median barriers are designed to prevent vehicles from crossing into oncoming lanes of traffic.
“We’re happy,” said Randy Ort, an agency spokesman, of the award. “This is something we applied for.”
The stretch of road has seen some crossover crashes and was the site of a 2004 bus accident that killed 15 people. But that crash resulted when the bus left the right side of the road, Ort said.
The grants are part of a federal initiative to reduce accidents on rural roads, which carry less than half of the nation’s traffic but account for more than half of the nation’s road deaths, according to the U. S. Transportation Department.
“Making one road safer is important. But making rural roads around the country less deadly is absolutely essential,” said U. S. Transportation Deputy Secretary Thomas J. Barrett, who presented awards Tuesday in Raymond, Miss.
Arkansas highway officials targeted one of the oldest stretches of interstate in Arkansas in its application for money available under the federal Delta Region Transportation Development Program. The southbound lanes opened for traffic in 1953, and cars and trucks started traveling on the northbound lanes in 1959, Ort said.
The grant application cited the stretch’s narrow 30-foot median, the standard of the era, Ort said. Modern interstate design typically requires median widths ranging from 60 feet to 80 feet, he said.
It’s also a much-traveled road with 27, 100 vehicles a day and 46 percent of the traffic being commercial vehicles, mainly trucks, Ort said.
“Due to the narrow width of the median, and the high volume of traffic, especially trucks, there exists the potential of median crossover crashes,” Ort said. “That made this [section ] a good candidate for this grant.”
Of the 42 counties considered part of the Arkansas Delta, Crittenden County had the fourth-highest number of rural accidents that resulted in fatalities or serious injuries from 2004 to 2007, Ort said. The top three counties in the region were White, Baxter and Pulaski, none of which are core Delta counties, Ort said.
The project is the fourth in the state to install a cable median barrier. The state Highway Department has also installed the systems on Interstate 430 between Colonel Glenn and Shackleford roads, on Interstate 40 between Biscoe and Brinkley and on a stretch of I-55 just south of the latest project.
A recent study by the Texas Department of Transportation found that the high-tension cable barriers constructed along 700 miles of Texas roadways prevented 18 fatalities and 26 injuries last year. The study focused on Texas medians that had cable barriers in place for at least one year.
The cable systems cost only a third as much as concrete barriers and, while they cost more to maintain, they remain less costly in the long term, according to the study.