By ROBIN SHANNON

Staff Reporter

NORCO — Officials in St. Charles Parish are hoping that a series of barriers along westbound Airline Highway between Interstate 310 and Norco will help prevent vehicles from leaving the highway and crashing into the murky water situated along the road’s shoulder.

Representatives from the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development recently announced that the state will go out for bids in 2010 for a project to install a system of cable barriers that will run between Airline Drive and the Borrow Pit Canal near Norco. The area in question is a dangerous stretch that has claimed several vehicles and numerous lives over the years.

“A lot of people have died on that stretch and something has to be done to put emergency responders back into the equation,” said St. Rose Volunteer Fire Department Chief Larry Cochran, whose department is often first on the scene to crashes in the canal. “There is not much we can do when vehicles plummet into the water because the cars sink so fast in the water. A barrier keeps them on dry land.”

With the help of State Rep., Gary Smith, D-Norco, and State Sen. Joel Chaisson II, D-Destrehan, St. Charles Parish will receive a $1 million allocation from the Louisiana Legislature to go toward funding for the cable barrier system. The legislative leaders made the push for the money after a series of crashes between 2004 and 2006 that resulted in four deaths.

“We had to find a way to stop this from happening,” Chaisson said.

Dustin Annison, a spokesman for LADOTD, said the project, which is still in the pre-design phase, consists of a stretch of three metal cables that are supported by a series of metal posts. The posts are placed into sockets installed within a concrete strip running adjacent to the shoulder of the roadway.

“The socket system keeps the cables under tension and prevents the posts from shifting in the wet soil,” Annison said. “It will also help with any necessary maintenance following an accident.”

Annison said the cables would run the entire length of the Borrow Pit Canal, stretching from the I-310 off ramp in St. Rose all the way into Norco, a distance of about seven miles. He said the cost per mile for the system stands at about $230,000.

“The cost sounds high, but the system is actually cheaper than putting up concrete barriers or metal guard rails,” Annison said. “There is also less of a chance that a vehicle will be thrown back into the roadway because the cables have the ability to give a little bit and catch vehicles like a safety net.”

Annison said similar initiatives to install barriers are already in motion in St. James and St. Tammany Parishes. The St. James project, set to start in November, calls for a 5.7-mile stretch of barriers along the Interstate 10 median, while the St. Tammany project, which will begin in December, calls for 12 miles of barrier along Interstate 12.

“These will be the first cable barriers of this kind within the state,” Annison said. “The systems have been found to experience a great amount of success in other areas.”

Annison said LADOTD is working on a series of design meetings, which will be completed sometime next spring. The project will go out for bids at the end of the state’s next fiscal year, which is scheduled to end June 30, 2010.

This is not the first time the state has considered some sort of safety measures for this stretch of Airline Highway. Cochran said a state and federal task force was set up in 2003 to study potential changes to the roadway. The task force recommended roughly $800,000 worth of improvements along the highway, but stopped short of barriers because of concerns about how vehicles might rebound back into the roadway. The issue was revisited in 2006 after more crashes occurred, but Smith and Chaisson requested the money before any recommendations were made.

“I hope this makes a difference, I really do,” Cochran said.