There wasn’t much that separated the opposite lanes of traffic in the construction zone on Interstate 29 when a pickup truck crossed the center line Aug. 9 and hit four motorcyclists, killing them.
Traffic through the construction zone was separated by 4-foot-high reflective sticks between the two lanes. The speed limit was 55 mph.
That is standard practice in lower-traffic Interstate construction zones in Iowa and Nebraska.
Darwin Bishop, the district construction engineer who supervises the work area near Little Sioux, Iowa, said a concrete barrier is not feasible.
“That takes up 2½ feet and our shoulders aren’t deep enough to handle the temporary traffic that would be on there,” he said.
When traffic levels require the state to have four lanes in a construction zone, two in each direction, a temporary barrier is used.
The crash killed three men from the Glenwood area and one Omaha man as they returned from Sturgis, S.D. Authorities say the driver of the pickup truck was driving drunk.
Jim Knott, Nebraska state roadway design engineer, said the amount of traffic dictates the type of barrier used.
One 9-mile-long construction zone on Interstate 80 between Kearney and Odessa, Neb., recently handled 16,000 to 17,000 vehicles per day in two lanes separated only by reflective devices.
“There is a lot lower volume of traffic, and we reduce the speeds in those areas,” Knott said. “We don’t have the major issues we do between Lincoln and Omaha.”
The Nebraska construction zone between Waverly and Greenwood has more than twice that amount of traffic — roughly 39,000 vehicles per day in four lanes — so concrete barriers separate the traffic in opposite directions.
Contact the writer:
444-3106, andrew.nelson@owh.com
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