Stoney Trail gets median-blocking cable barriers
Province installing measure to prevent head-on collisions on divided highways
A stretch of Calgary roadway is expected to become significantly safer with the installation of a cable barrier meant to limit the severity of accidents.
The Alberta government has started installing a high-tension cable barrier along the entire 65-kilometre stretch of Stoney Trail — at a cost to the province of $3.5 million. The barrier is designed to reduce the severity of collisions and enhance overall safety.
“The main purpose of the project is to prevent them from going across the median and into oncoming traffic on the other side of the road,” said Wayne Wood, communications adviser for Alberta Transportation.
The cable barriers are used along highways across the province to reduce head-on crashes on high-volume divided highways. They’re made of three or four high-tension cables that contain or redirect any vehicles that leave the road, from passenger vehicles to semi-trailers.
The cable absorbs impact, which prevents vehicles from bouncing off and back into traffic. Yet it doesn’t do as much damage to the vehicle as a steel or concrete barrier because of the shock absorption, Wood said.
Structural engineer Louis Andersen has been calling on the province to undertake the project for some time. “It should help with quite a few of the instances where accidents could have been preventable,” said Andersen. “There’s a lot of hazards on the road. And I’m glad that the government actually responded to the safety concerns.”
Andersen said that because highway driving can be so unpredictable, the barriers will promote a safer highway experience.
“It isn’t just drunk people who are crashing. Accidents can happen anytime, right? It could be that a deer crossed the road and you end up in a ditch, and that ditch may have a big concrete pole in the middle,” said Andersen.
In 2007, a high-tension cable barrier along a 10.75-kilometre stretch of Deerfoot Trail became the first major cable barrier in Canada. The demand for that barrier was sparked by the death of an Airdrie woman’s unborn baby in an accident.
Tracie Taylor was seven months pregnant when a vehicle crossed the median and collided head-on with her car in August 2005. She had an emergency C-section in an attempt to save the baby’s life, but her son did not survive. The driver and passenger of the other vehicle also died in the collision.
A cable barrier could have prevented the accident.
Taylor and her husband lobbied the provincial government to construct a barrier on Deerfoot Trail — when the government approved the cable barrier, the two went out for dinner to celebrate.
“Now no one else has to go through this pain, but why wasn’t this done earlier?” Taylor told Postmedia in July 2006.
After its installation along Deerfoot Trail, EBA Tetra Tech Company released a report on the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of the barriers.
The 2011 study found that in the first three years, “the rate and severity of median-related severe collisions dropped significantly after the installation of the barrier.” Their definition of severe collisions included those that resulted in fatalities or major injuries.
The study showed an increase in the amount of property-damage-only collisions but the frequency of severe collisions dropped by 25 per cent, and the safety performance of the section of highway improved by 27.92 per cent for fatal/injury collisions and 32.46 per cent for fatal collisions.
A 2013 report by the same company found the cable barrier installed along 122 kilometres of Highway 2 between Airdrie and Red Deer, and near Leduc, “reduced the severity of collisions, (was) highly cost effective and (could) serve as a model for further application of this barrier,” across the province and country.
The cable barriers also proved functional in Alberta’s winters as they perform better at reducing snow drifting, compared with steel or concrete barriers, according to Wood. The 2013 study found snow-clearing vehicles weren’t damaging the barriers because they are positioned farther from the side of the road.
From 2012 to 2016, the five most recent years on record, there were 1,506 collisions on Stoney Trail reported by Calgary police, which included one fatality, 137 injuries and 1,395 property-damage-only crashes.
Construction of the project could take until the snow falls this winter, depending on weather, according to Wood, although it won’t disrupt traffic.
The province will also install a cable barrier along eight kilometres of the QEII between Balzac and Calgary, five kilometres between Airdrie and Balzac, and four kilometres along the highway south of Calgary. The entire high-tension cable barrier project in and around Calgary is expected to cost the government $5 million.
There’s a lot of hazards on the road. And I’m glad that the government actually responded to the safety concerns.