MARYSVILLE – Work crews on Monday started taking measurements along I-5 in Marysville, the first step toward improving safety along a deadly section of freeway.
The state Department of Transportation has freed up $500,000 in its safety budget to design a concrete barrier that will replace 10 miles of cable barrier on northbound I-5.
A new strand of cables on southbound I-5 will stay.
The state estimates it may cost $28 million to install the concrete barriers. The work being done this week will help refine that estimate, said Russ East, assistant regional administrator for the DOT in Snohomish and King counties.
Part of the work is to get an idea of how much stormwater runoff must be handled. Traffic engineers also are trying to determine whether they may have to buy land to make room for an I-5 wide enough for concrete median barriers.
They want the work completed by December, early enough for the Legislature to consider funding for the project in the 2008 supplemental budget, East said.
“The direction was to get this thing moving as quickly as we could,” East said.
Money to install new barriers will be found next spring, promised state Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen D-Camano Island, chairwoman of the Senate Highways and Transportation Committee.
“We’re going to find what we have to find,” she said.
Still, Haugen wants the cost to be cheaper than $28 million.
“Hopefully they’re going to come up with a number that’s lower than that,” she said.
If the Legislature funds the project this spring, construction could start in summer 2009, East said.
Haugen wants to see the state move even faster.
“I’d like to see them doing construction next year,” she said. “We’ll have to see how fast they can work on it.”
Cables on the northbound side of I-5 are being replaced with concrete at the recommendation of a national traffic safety expert who in June said cable barriers too often have failed to save lives on 10 miles of I-5 in Marysville.
State records show that eight people have died in cross-median accidents on 10 miles of I-5 in Marysville since 2000. In each case, the cable barriers failed to stop vehicles.
State traffic engineers tally the wrecks differently and put at seven the number of deaths in cable-barrier-related accidents in that stretch.
The death of Clifford Warren of Everett in a fiery February crash spurred Gov. Chris Gregoire to order a review of the state’s cable barrier program.
The expert hired by the state found that cable barriers are working well elsewhere in Washington, saving lives, but for unknown reasons were failing too often in Marysville.
A man was killed in the Tacoma area earlier this month in an accident involving cable barriers. According to state officials, that was the first fatal accident involving cable barriers in the state outside of Marysville.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
