NORCO �“ Motorists who regularly travel Airline Highway between St. Rose and Norco through St. Charles Parish are finally about to get some protection from a cavernous canal that runs along the right shoulder of the roadway.

Officials with the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development opened the bidding process this week on a steel guardrail project that they hope will keep drivers from crashing into the Barrow Pit Canal.

Although a spokesman for DOTD said the highway department had been planning to open the bid process this week, the announcement comes just five days after a Montz woman died after her vehicle swerved into the canal following an accident with a pickup truck. “It just shows you how important it is for some kind of barrier to be in place,” said Dustin Annison of DOTD. “We hope to get moving on the project as quickly as possible.”

When bids opened Wednesday, original estimates for the guardrail put the cost at about $1.9 million. The apparent low bidder for the project, RMD Holdings LTD of Chesterfield, Mich., said they could do the job for just over $1.56 million. Company officials said the project could be completed in about 52 days.

Annison said RMD outbid five other companies for the guardrail job. The next lowest bidder, Alpha Service and Products Inc., said the job could be done in 20 days. The other four firms, Boh Brothers Construction, Barriere Construction, Highway Technologies Inc. and Odum Services LP, estimated the job would take between 100 and 125 days to complete.

State highway officials won’t officially award the job until it is determined that the bid and contractor meet all specifications for the project.

“Barring any complications, we should get rolling by late summer or early fall,” Annison said. “The job should go pretty quick.

Annison said the steel guardrail, similar to those along interstate highway shoulders, will protect a 5.5-mile stretch of roadway from Almedia Road in St. Rose to Prospect Avenue in Norco. The project includes installation of the guardrail, asphalt strip and all other related work.

State legislators and DOTD officials have talked for years about constructing a barrier between the canal, which is said to be 30 feet deep in some places, and the roadway in light of numerous accidents in that area. Talk accelerated in 2003 when four siblings died after their car left the roadway and ended up in the canal. A mother and her 3-year-old daughter died in the canal a few months later. Opponents of the barrier said it would crowd the narrow shoulder and could potentially bounce wayward vehicles back into oncoming traffic.

Talks were renewed in 2007 after more accidents occurred and legislative leaders from the parish requested a task force look into the issue. The project got a serious jumpstart in the 2008 legislative session when state Sen. Joel Chaisson II, D-Destrehan, got a $1 million appropriation for the project.

When discussed last year, the original project called for a series of cable barriers similar to those placed in the median of Interstate 12 in St. Tammany Parish and Interstate 10 in St. James Parish. Annison said a soil study in the area led engineers to go with a 3-foot-tall steel rail barrier.

“Cable barriers are designed for areas with more space than that of the shoulder along the canal,” Annison said. “The soil is too moist to sustain the posts that run between the cables.”