Cable barriers raise new concerns in ‘Blood Alley’

By Marcus Hathcock

The Gresham Outlook, Sep 18, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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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.”

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