Casey Highway Installing Barriers

((nick))penn-dot is expanding a project to put new safety barriers on the casey highway in lackawanna county.more than a year after installing several miles of cable median barriers in the mid-valley -- the barriers are now going up in the up-valley.eyewitness news reporter eric deabill is live in archbald with the details.eric?

((deabill))nick...last april -- the cable barriers went up from the dunmore area to jessup.now -- more barriers are being installed -- from archbald -- all the way up to carbondale township.that means virtually all of the casey highway will now be covered.

((deabill))penn-dot contractors were hard at work thursday along the casey highway -- drilling down into the ground.workers are starting to put-up additional cable median barriers in an effort to save lives.(james may, penndot spokesman)"we've seen a large number of crashes that have taken place in which a motorist traveling one direction ends up crossing over this median and ends up going into the opposing lane" one of those crashes in throop in august 2012 -- killed a candidate for state representative..the goal of the barriers is to "catch cars" that hit them -- because the cable has elasticity and can bend like a rubber band.

Archbald police chief tim trently is happy the new barriers are being installed in his area.(chief tim trently, archbald police department)"we've seen it when the weather's bad up there -- we do see a lot of cars that leave the roadway and come into the median -- so the potential is there for them to cross into the other lane" (eric deabill, eyewitness news) "if you just look at the first set of cable median barriers installed, you can see they've been effective.

Some of the posts here have been ripped out of the ground.

That means crashes have been prevented"while the cable barriers are designed to stop cars and trucks -- penndot showed us one instance in northampton county where they stopped a large fed-ex truck.(james may, penndot spokesman)"by installing these -- we have no idea how many lives we can save -- but that's really our goal with this" ((deabill))crews that are installing the new barriers are working ten hour days -- in an effort to get the new cables up as quickly as possible.the work should be finished by early october.live in archbald -- eric deabill -- eyewitness news.

((nick))penn-dot says the project to put up the new barriers is costing 850- thousand dollars.

((nick))