Concrete barriers to replace some cables on I-5 near Marysville

In the wake of a fatal crash near Marysville last year, the state Department of Transportation (DOT) says it will replace cable barriers along a 10-mile stretch of northbound Interstate 5 with a concrete barrier next year.

The plan to build the 42-inch-tall barrier was included in a DOT report released Wednesday. The cost of the barriers is $8 million; the entire project, which includes the widening of the shoulders, is expected to cost nearly $27 million.

In 2007, a state consultant recommended that a concrete barrier be built on the northbound lanes but that cable barriers be left along the southbound lanes.

Gov. Christine Gregoire had ordered the report after a southbound vehicle ripped through two sets of cable barriers and collided with a charter bus near Marysville in 2007, killing the driver of the car and injuring the bus driver.

A DOT study found that 18 vehicles passed through the cables between Arlington and Marysville from 1999 to 2005.

Concrete barriers are placed in freeway medians to catch or slow vehicles that leave the road and could cross to the other lanes of the freeway. Critics say cable barriers don't do a good enough job.

The state notes in its new report, however, that since Malcolm Ray, of Worcester Polytechnic Institute of Massachusetts, released the February 2007 report, there has not been a fatal- or serious-injury cross-median accident in the Marysville area.

In addition to the concrete barrier near Marysville, the state plans to install seven more miles of cable barriers on I-5, Interstate 90 and Highway 599. The DOT has identified 27 other miles of highways where it also hopes to install barriers.

In all, the state has 177 miles of cable barriers, after adding 43 miles of them in 2007.

In a letter to Gregoire, DOT Secretary Paula Hammond noted a 73 percent drop in crossover collisions where cable barriers have been installed.

In the report released Wednesday, the DOT analyzed nearly 2,550 collisions along 177 miles of cable barriers from 1995 through 2007. It found that between 2000 and 2007, there was a 44 percent decrease in fatal and serious-injury accidents occurring within or across the median where cable barriers have been installed.

In 2007, the report found, there were three fatalities involving crossovers:

• The one involving the car and bus in Marysville in 2007;

• One near Fife in which the driver of a car going south at a high rate of speed lost control of the car, which went into the median and under the cable barrier, killing the driver.

• The driver of a speeding car was killed on Highway 512 near Tacoma when the car went under the barrier, crossed over to the eastbound lanes and hit a truck.

Susan Gilmore: 206-464-2054 or sgilmore@seattletimes.com

Information in this article, originally published September 18, 2008, was corrected September 22, 2008. A previous version of this story did not include the expected total cost for the project.