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Massachusetts highway administrators are misguidedly installing taller Jersey barriers.

Mass. road barriers are getting taller

This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 11/9/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

By Anthony Flint, Globe Staff, 11/9/2003

America's highways are getting supersized, and Massachusetts is helping lead the way.

Along with plentiful lanes and longer exit ramps, taller ''jersey'' barriers are the latest in the trend toward bigness on the roads.

The 42-inch-tall concrete barriers, 10 inches taller than conventional ones, are needed to accommodate increasingly taller, bigger, and heavier sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, state officials say.

''It's keeping up with the changes,'' said Matthew J. Amorello, chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which has decided to use the barriers any time a median is replaced. ''It seems like every other car on the road is an SUV, and they're getting bigger. They can

get airborne and clear the 32-inch barriers, so the extra height makes all the difference.'' Highway engineers and safety specialists say the taller barriers also help eliminate glare from traffic -- since headlights are getting higher along with vehicles.

The taller jersey barriers -- so named for their early extensive use in New Jersey, dating back to the 1950s -- are heavier than the 32-inch model: roughly 8,000 pounds per 12-foot segment, compared with 6,900 pounds. The new barriers, wide at the bottom and more slender at the top are also more expensive. They cost $500,000 per mile, versus $350,000 for the 32-inch barriers, turnpike officials said.

Massachusetts, New Jersey, Virginia, and Oregon are the first states to use the bigger barriers.

Although the rationale for the upgrade is safety, state highway officials could not produce records of accidents involving bigger vehicles vaulting the 32-inch jersey barrier. Amorello said he recalled at least one such accident in the Lowell area when he was state highway commissioner.

And although Amorello said the turnpike was ''following new federal highway standards,'' the super-size barriers are not, in fact, required by the federal government.

''It's optional. There is no mandate,'' said Carl Gottschall, the Central Artery and Tunnel project administrator at the Federal Highway Administration's office in Cambridge. ''They've been crash tested, and they are safer. The states look at these things and make their own decisions.''

Major Michael Mucci, commanding officer of State Police Troop E, which is assigned to the Massachusetts Turnpike, said troopers are applauding the bigger barriers.

He called them a significant improvement over the old-fashioned metal guardrails that are in place along most of the median of the 135-mile turnpike.

The 32-inch concrete barriers are fine, Mucci said, but if they are being replaced in reconstruction anyway, or the metal guardrails are being replaced, the 42-inch barriers are an extra step for safety.

''My troopers love them,'' Mucci said. ''They're stronger, and can take a crushing, high-speed impact much better. This barrier will really hold [vehicles] back into the lane. It's the scariest thing we see, when a vehicle gets over the barrier, and the driver in the other lane just has no idea. That's when you have the horrific fatalities.''

New Jersey was the first to replace the 32-inch barrier, which started out in 1955 at 18 inches tall, with the 42-inch barriers, also known as the ''tall wall'' barrier.

The 42-inch barriers made their debut in Massachusetts when a short stretch of the turnpike in Auburn was rebuilt 10 years ago. But the outsized concrete walls are now being seen along longer segments of the roadway. They are in place along a 5-mile stretch through Grafton, Millbury, and Auburn. The 42-inch barrier will also be used along the turnpike from the Weston tolls into Boston as that median is replaced, officials said.

''If you drive the Pike the next couple of days, you'll notice it. Anytime we do reconstruction, and next up is the Millbury-to-Framingham stretch, that's the profile you'll see. That's what the turnpike is going to look like in the next few years,'' said Amorello.

Jonathan Carlisle, spokesman for the Massachusetts Highway Department, said the 42-inch barriers have also been installed on several other state roads. They are in place in segments of the median of Route 146, Interstate 290, Route 3 from the Braintree split to Weymouth, and Route 2 in the Leominster-Fitchburg stretch, Carlisle said.

The barriers are planned for the Route 3 lane-widening project nearing completion from Burlington to Tyngsboro, and the add-a-lane project on Route 128 from Randolph to Wellesley, he said. Taller medians are also in store for Route 2 between Route 128 and Lincoln, Carlisle said.

''When we go in and reconstruct a limited access roadway, it's our practice to use the tall wall,'' he said.

The ''tall wall'' has not been greeted with unanimous praise everywhere. In Pittsburgh last year, a plan to put 42-inch barriers on the main bridge into the city was rejected, after criticism that the super-sized concrete barriers would obstruct the view of the skyline and the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio rivers.

A new style of barrier was proposed, consisting of concrete up to 24 inches tall, capped with steel guardrails with large see-through openings.

Anthony Flint can be reached at flint@globe.com.