Cable barriers raise new concerns in ‘Blood Alley’
Hoodland firefighters inspect the Cherryville cable barriers last week.
Marcus Hathcock / Pamplin Media Group
They were installed to prevent devastating head-on collisions, but the new cable barriers along Highway 26 east of Sandy have created new concerns and challenges for local residents, public safety officials and lawmakers.
The questions abound: What can firefighters and paramedics expect when they arrive on the scene? How will the barriers affect response times? Is the 8-foot median even wide enough to prevent a deadly head-on crash?
In an attempt to answer some of those questions, State Rep. Patti Smith and officials from the Oregon Department of Transportation will host a meeting from 4 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 26, at Sandy City Hall, 39250 Pioneer Blvd.
“It’s important to hear every issue when safety is involved,” Smith said. “I don’t know how we’d address all those issues, but I’m for anything we can do to make the highway safer.”
Smith spearheaded efforts over the past five years to designate “Blood Alley” — the 2-mile stretch of Highway 26 named for its deadly crashes — a safety corridor and have the cables installed.
Those efforts intensified after a head-on collision killed five people in Cherryville this summer, bringing the total number of fatalities in the vicinity to nine since 2000.
The barriers consist of three woven steel cables that carry 7,500 pounds of tension. They sit loosely on steel posts — spaced about 10 feet apart — and are anchored in concrete at each end. When hit by a vehicle, the posts are designed to collapse, allowing the cables to absorb the impact and prevent a centerline crossover. A ricochet effect snaps the vehicle back into its original lane of travel.
Texas-based Trinity Highway Products LLC, the manufacturer of the barriers, claims the system can withstand a hit by an 18,000-pound truck traveling at 50 mph at a 20-degree angle.
The barriers are the first of its kind in Oregon — and among the first in the United States — to be installed. The $1.56-million project placed cables between Weber Road and the west end of Cherryville Drive to the Baty Road/East Terra Fern Drive intersection, and then again from Baty/Terra Fern to the east end of the Cherryville Drive loop.
How to respond to a crash?
Soon after the cables’ installation in late July, Hoodland Fire Chief Mic Eby realized that although they would help prevent crossover crashes, they also would complicate first responders’ jobs.
“The problems they present — although much more minor than dying or killing — give us a whole new set of rules and guidelines,” Eby said. “There are all new challenges we haven’t had before — logistical questions that keep me awake.”
This month, Hoodland firefighters have taken several field trips to Cherryville to examine the barriers and visualize various scenarios that could occur at and around them.
“We learned basically which pieces of equipment fit and where we shouldn’t be parking them,” Eby said. “We’re working things out in our heads, trying to do pre-plans for every kind of scenario we can think of.”
At a meeting of local public safety and ODOT officials Wednesday, Sept. 12, in Sandy, Eby was relieved to learn from the barrier manufacturer that firefighters could safely cut the cables in an emergency or simply lay them on the ground temporarily to allow for more room in the median.
But despite the apparent ease of disabling the high-tension cables, Eby believes that responding to crashes and other calls in the Cherryville corridor will be much more difficult and time-consuming than they were before.
“I foresee us shutting down the highway a whole lot more than before,” Eby said. “A normal hour and a half (operation) is going to take five hours.”
Hoodland firefighters would drive from the east to reach Cherryville. An accident in the westbound lanes would be easily reachable, although rescuers would shut down at least one lane of the highway, depending on the size and scope of the crash.
An accident in the eastbound lanes would prove more difficult for firefighters, as the cable barriers would stand between them and the wounded.
“We want to make sure we’re on the right side of the road for an auto accident,” Eby said, “so that when we come up to it, we’re not going to have to go past it and turn around,” prolonging response time.
The Cherryville area, split between the Sandy and Hoodland fire districts, is an “automatic mutual aid” area, meaning that firefighters from both agencies would respond to incidents there.
So with responders from two different organizations bringing rigs to an incident, there’s not going to be a lot of room for drivers. Motorists instead could be directed to the Cherryville Drive loop, a narrow, two-lane road that could pose additional traffic hazards.
Eby also said he’d like to have more detailed information from dispatchers to best understand where crashes are, both geographically and in relation to the barriers. “That way we know what to expect,” he said.
Neighborhood concerns
The new barriers directly affect three properties along the corridor. Burns Busselaar owns one of them, and he isn’t too happy about it.
“I’m all for the barrier and for saving lives,” Busselaar said, noting that this summer’s devastating crash was 300 feet from his driveway near Terra Fern Drive. “But I don’t think they did this with the interests of the community in mind.”
He said the fact that the barriers haven’t been tested in an environment such as Cherryville’s turns drivers into “guinea pigs” for an ODOT pilot program.
“I guess we’re waiting for an accident basically to see if this little project will hold up,” Busselaar said. “I don’t think that’s the way to do it; before ODOT implements any kind of safety device, it needs to be tested.”
Busselaar cited Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire’s investigation into that state’s cable barrier systems as a reason to be concerned.
Those barriers, manufactured by the same company as Cherryville’s, weren’t able to prevent the deaths of eight people due to crossover crashes in the treacherous Marysville area of Interstate 5. A statewide analysis determined that while most of the state’s barriers were working properly, Marysville’s weren’t doing the job. Last month, Gregoire directed state transportation officials to replace the cable barriers in Marysville with concrete ones, a $27 million about-face.
“We’re not thoroughly convinced yet that this is going to work,” Busselaar said, noting that he thinks the 8-foot median might not be large enough to keep head-on collisions from happening.
Busselaar also has a personal complaint about the barriers. In order to go west from his home on the south side of the highway, he has to drive about a mile east and turn around. That, he says, ironically endangers his family.
“If we have a life-or-death situation where we need to run a family member into town, we have to backtrack (east) about five minutes” before being able to drive westbound, he said.
He noted that since the cables were installed, the highway near his home has lost four and a half feet of shoulder, making for “some very hairy situations” at a nearby school bus stop.
“They’ve eliminated our freedom to turn westbound,” he said. “They’ve devalued my property, put our families in danger and overlooked our concerns completely.”
Busselaar says he doesn’t want to see the barriers removed, but he wants them to be tested. He also wants a gap in front of his property.
Untested, but safe
The fact that the cables haven’t been tested in conditions such as Cherryville’s doesn’t trouble ODOT or the barriers’ manufacturers.
Don Gripne, a representative from the cables’ manufacturer, Texas-based Trinity Highway Products, told public safety and ODOT officials at the Sept. 12 meeting in Sandy that although the barriers — the “Test Level Four” model — have not been tested, they were designed to withstand a greater impact than the popular “Test Level Three” product, which is used throughout Europe.
“It’s going to do the job,” Gripne summarized. “It’s quite a wall.”
ODOT Spokeswoman Christine Miles said she didn’t know how the barriers will affect Cherryville.
“We don’t know the long-term effects because we’ve never put in them in an area like this,” she said, noting that these barriers are in concrete, as opposed to the dirt-embedded barriers that ODOT installed on Interstate 5 south of Portland. “We do know they can reduce the severity of crossovers and prevent fewer fatals, and that’s what we’re trying to prevent.”
While Gripne and Miles both said the small medians aren’t the best situation, they agreed that having a barrier that allows a small chance of a head-on collision is better than no barrier at all.
“You’d have to have superior timing to hit another car head-on in less than a second,” Miles said, “because then it shoots you back over into your own lane.”
That ricochet effect, she said, likely will cause more “non-serious” collisions and injuries since vehicles that hit the barrier may be pushed into other cars.
In most cases, though, if a vehicle hits the cables, they could just drive away with no problem, Miles said.
“A lot of times, someone hits that cable barrier but is able to drive off,” Miles said. “We have nine non-reported crashes into those cable barriers a month.”
They can tell because they see some of the center posts knocked down, she added.
As for the homeowners’ concerns, Rep. Smith said, “We’ll see what we can do. There may be some things we can do still, but I don’t think everybody’s going to leave happy.”