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Backpacks bedevil Back Bay boulevard, bicyclists blocked
By adamg on Fri, 08/04/2017 - 3:34pm
Shortly after 3 p.m., the back of a tractor-trailer sprung open on Mass. Ave. in front of the new Berklee building, and hundreds of backpacks sprung out, immediately shutting the road, as Riggs shows us.
Crews moved the backpacks into the bike lane
The road towards Boylston will be shut for awhile as the trailer is completely offloaded.
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Comments
Backpacks
They're bad enough on the Green Line
Backpacks
Yes, also on the commuter rail. This one guy, maybe 50 years old wears a loaded one on Back Bay platform. Drives me crazy to see it every single commute home.
Get...
... over it.
Haha!
.
Who Ships Backpacks Like That?!!
( there must be more to the story...
...and where's the video of this?! )
None of the hampers appeared
None of the hampers appeared to have had their wheels chocked when they were loaded. It appears the trailer door hinge snapped from the collective weight of them rolling back against it. No apparent injuries, but word on the street was a car headed south on Mass Ave got clipped in the initial tumble. Shame for the charity to end a good day like this.
You mean something like this
Note: forward the clip to 2:44
What wasn't reported in the
What wasn't reported in the initial twitter blast was, there was a second trailer ahead of this one, also hauling backpacks. That driver made it through the red light, but stopped to walk back and help his comrade with the spilt goods.
Your vid suddenly struck me with the giggles, imagining Clarkson getting a call on the radio from May, that he lost dropped his load. Cue Clarkson shouting at May for making a mess, etc.
Post-script: BPD's commercial enforcement team eventually established a pick-up point over by the back of the Hynes, and laborers individually wheeled all 18-ish hampers off Mass Ave and down Belvidere.
Mass Ave was fully clear by 7:00 for the all the self-entitled, ridiculously huffy cyclists who were outraged at the imposition that an *accident* had on their right to act like assholes. Such an injustice this was, that for four hours, bikers couldn't ding-a-long their little bells and shout "MOVE! BIKE!" while illegally blowing through the red light at Mass Ave/Belvidere, endangering pedestrians with a lit crosswalk sign. lol
Wow
That's quite an elaborate fantasy you've concocted for your last paragraph. All it needs is some illustrations.
BPS?
They look a lot like backpacks handed out by BPS at their Countdown to Kindergarten event. https://goo.gl/4xWGBh
Close
Apparently they were from a New Balance program for Cradles to Crayons at the Reggie Lewis Center.
Flapdoodle!
Did they get a permit OR a ticket?
cradles to crayons?
cradles to crayons back-pack-a-thon was today at the Reggie Lewis center
I was guessing Pan Mass Challenge swag
My guess was that they were giveaways for PMC participants.
If that's the case,
it's really ironic that the backpacks are now blocking a bike lane.
Even more ironic ...
Cyclists will still probably be able to get past the obstruction, despite their lane being rudely appropriated. Sounds like motorists are completely blocked.
Since you seem to be
Since you seem to be uninformed, it is the law in Massachusetts that cyclists may use the full lane and are not restricted to the bike lane. You're welcome!
I'm quite well informed...
... about laws concerning cycling in MA.
Your comment makes no sense. Where exactly did I say say cyclists are restricted to bike lanes? Not only do cyclists have right to the entire road they may take a full lane, any lane.
I was
waiting for the huffing and puffing to begin.
The PMC rides from outside of Boston
There are a small number of cyclists leaving from WTC Boston, but that's a small fraction compared to the Sturbridge and Wellesley starts. All swag would have been delivered yesterday or earlier today, as it was already handout time when this happened. Registration starts around noon on Friday.
18 wheelers do not belong...
... on city streets. It's a matter of time before they are banned, just as other cities have done.
In this case, the truck was going down the street
perfectly fine and without any issues related to tight clearances or the like. This incident was apparently due to the cargo not being properly secured (which ANY truck driver should do regardless of the size of their rig), and not because of any physical limitations of the infrastructure the driver was navigating at the time.
However, I will concede that it is rather odd that one would consider using an 18 wheeler to transport backpacks. I mean, did they really expect the turnout for the charity event to be THAT large.
18 wheelers do not belong...
... on city streets. It's a matter of time before they are banned, just as other cities have done.
Trucks get goods where you can walk/bike to them
Unfortunately living a 19th century simulation with 21st century convenience involves massive logistics getting all the goods to you. Did you know that Hubway drives bicycles around all day in IC powered trucks?
Other cities ....
... have goods distributed without 18 wheelers. No reason why Boston can't do the same.
If they're banned
You're adding a logistics nightmare for various suppliers.
We learned this during a recent interstate move: the Corporate Guy giving the estimate told us our stuff would travel in a partitioned semi-truck. Our streets- on both ends of the move- were too narrow for the semi, so the moving crew had to use a midsized Penske truck, load all of our stuff into it, drive the midsized truck to the depot with the semi, unload the Penske truck into the semi, drive our stuff across the country to the depot, unload our stuff from the semi into another Penske truck, drive it to our new place, and then finally unload it into our apartment.
This was 1 move that turned into 3 moves. And to their credit, they kept track of all of our belongings!
Imagine the financial toll this would take on shops and suppliers. Instead of having 1 driver/delivery crew to hit all of their delivery destinations, they'd have to have space at a local depot, a secondary fleet of smaller trucks in Boston, and a second, larger pool of drivers/delivery people as the cargo was divided out among several smaller trucks. Places like Star Market, Target, CVS, can receive multiple semis a day, so multiply this out and it turns into more trucks on the road and increased costs for consumers.