Friday, Jun. 05, 2009

MLK Bridge to become safer: IDOT will install concrete barrier, eliminate one lane

The Illinois Department of Transportation plans to close the Martin Luther King Bridge in East St. Louis for 12 days next fall to install a concrete barrier down the centerline and permanently close one of two westbound lanes as part of plan to reduce traffic deaths.

The Illinois Department of Transportation announced the safety upgrades during a news conference Thursday at its Collinsville regional office.

"I'm happy this is happening," said Christine Steibel, 43, of Ruma.

On Nov. 12, 2004, Steibel's father, Dale Steibel, was a passenger in a westbound RideFinders commuter van en route to St. Louis. The van crossed the bridge's centerline and hit a tractor-trailer head-on, killing the van driver and three passengers, including Dale Steibel.

Dale Steibel's death has meaning now because it "might have caused this to happen," Christine Steibel said, alluding to the safety improvements scheduled for the MLK span.

Bids for the $2.5 million MLK project -- which will be financed with state and federal dollars -- will be let next month, with construction set to begin sometime this fall. The bridge will be closed a total of 12 days to accommodate the barrier's construction.

The elimination of one of the two westbound lanes likely will add an estimated one to three minutes to the morning commute, said Mary Lamie, engineer and deputy director of IDOT's Region 5.

"We think it's going to be worth the wait, and we're going to ask for patience from the morning commuters," Lamie said.

The concrete barrier, which will stand 2 feet high, will consist of a chain of sections connected by steel cable. The barrier will not be anchored to the bridge, but kept in place by its own weight, said Priscilla Tobias, IDOT's state safety engineer.

The concrete barrier to be installed on the MLK Bridge borrows from a design being used in Texas, Tobias said.

"It's been crash-tested and approved," she said.

After a road safety assessment that began in January, and which included input from U.S. Department of Transportation, IDOT determined that closing one of the eastbound lanes instead would have caused traffic to back up into downtown St. Louis, especially during special events, Lamie said.

The safety upgrades planned for the MLK Bridge are taking place six months after the News-Democrat began publishing a series of stories that showed how, since 1998, 14 people have died on the bridge because of traffic accidents -- almost all of them from head-on collisions related to speeding and the lack of a centerline barrier.

In the same period, one person has died on the far busier Poplar Street span -- with none dying on that bridge since 1998.

Motorists on the MLK bridge are, on average, about 25 times more likely to die in a fatal car crash than those on Poplar Street Bridge, according to a bridge safety expert quoted in the News-Democrat in a February story.

Safety experts interviewed by the newspaper had blamed the high MLK death rate on its narrow width, location off a major highway and the absence of a centerline barrier to prevent cross-over crashes.

Besides cutting the current four lanes down to two eastbound and one westbound lane, the project also will widen to 12 feet across each of the lanes and add 12-inch-wide shoulders in each direction.

The 40-foot-wide bridge has four lanes that are each 10 feet -- a width considered "substandard" by the federal government.

Reconfiguring the MLK to three lanes would make each lane 12 feet wide -- the federal minimum -- with two feet to spare next to each guardrail.

In other bridge safety news, IDOT has announced that the McKinley Bridge, which links Venice to downtown St. Louis, will be closed to traffic beginning at 6 p.m. June 12, and will reopen at 5 a.m. June 15. The closure is taking place to allow work crews to grind a safety rumble strip along the bridge's centerline.

Meanwhile, the Illinois State Police will continue its enhanced safety patrols around the exits to and from the MLK Bridge, said Capt. Jerry Culp, commander of state police District 11 in Collinsville.

The patrols began in January, and through June 1 have resulted in nearly 2,000 traffic citations being issued, including 1,286 for speeding, Culp said.

Culp acknowledged the safety improvements on the bridge could slow down the traffic flow across the span.

"But I think it will only increase the safety of the Martin Luther King Bridge," he said.

Also, state lawmakers are considering legislation that would require cameras to be installed on the MLK Bridge. The cameras would automatically snap photos of speeding motorists.