Alberta's provincial highway network has 31,000 km of which 2,335 km are multi-lane divided highways. Alberta Transportation (AT) has implemented under the "engineering and infrastructure" strategy the installation of prestretched, post-tensioned, high-tension median cable barriers on high volume divided highways with relatively narrow medians. The program is consistent with Canada's Road Safety Vision 2010. The purpose of the program is to prevent fatalities and serious injuries caused by vehicles crossing over the median into the opposing traffic lanes. To date, three median cable barrier projects totalling 144 km have been or are being installed on Alberta Highway 2, the main primary highway between Calgary and Edmonton. In addition, a short section of median cable barrier was installed at the Highway 16-Highway 21 interchange east of Edmonton. During the 34 month operation (May 2007 to February 2010) of the median cable barrier on the Deerfoot Trail, there were 135 incidents of vehicles hitting the cable barrier resulting in the replacement of posts, hairpins and/or lock plates. No crossover fatal collisions occurred in these 34 months (nearly three years), compared to seven fatal crossover collisions in the seven year period 1999 to 2005 on the same section of the Deerfoot Trail. This project was nominated for the 2009 TAC Road Safety Engineering Award. For the covering abstract of this conference see ITRD number E220308.
Abstract