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Several hurt when T bus crashes into trailer for Sandra Bullock movie in Dudley Square
By adamg on Mon, 07/09/2012 - 10:02am
Dudley bus crash. Photo by Eric Esteves.
Matt Grabowski tweets it happened at Dudley and Warren around 9:30 a.m. and that at least 12 people were injured. The Boston Fire Department reports several people were taken to local hospitals, with all expected to survive. The bus plowed into a trailer set up for the production crew of a Sandra Bullock movie being filmed in Dudley Square.
More photos: The injured | The bus | The injured and the bus
Filmogaphy: Bullock, of course, previously starred in a movie about an exploding bus, as Jendepo182 notes.
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Comments
Any idea what caused it, yet?
.
Let me be the first to say
I gotta get on that bus!
Was the bus
SPEEDing?
Pop quiz, hot shot...
You drive an MBTA bus for a living. Up ahead is a movie truck related to Sandra Bullock. It's the kind of irony that you live for. What do you do? What do you do?
I would ask
Which is more necessary for commuters in Boston. Streets that are wide enough for MBTA buses to safely go down, or streets that are blocked by tractor trailers for cheezy Hollywood productions?
you forgot
on the taxpayer dime.
Road was wide enough before being "improved"
The curve where the accident occurred looks like it was a victim of current roadway design where everything is made narrower and harder to travel in order to slow all motor vehicle flows. This along with trucks being unable to make tighter corners is the consequence for a failed policy with no demonstrated benefits, only failures.
failure?
Seems it worked to me.
If they find this driver was exceeding the speed limit, which for the accident it appears they had to be, then they're going to be in a load of trouble.
Breaking laws and putting passengers at risk is unacceptable, even if it's done daily by irresponsible MBTA operators.
Worked for you?
How are your skills at driving a tandem bus? Most road designers only drive canned computer programs and never experience driving a tractor trailer, bus, or tandem bus on narrow roads and tight corners they promote, much less doing it 6+ hours a day during commuting hours, 5 days a week. See how tranquil they are after driving that on their "traffic calm"ed roads!
Thats the job
don't sign up for the ok pay and awesome benefits if you don't want it and can't handle it.
How about you?
You seem to show a lot of interest in road design for somebody with no concept of road design or clue that roads aren't just about the ease of car travel.
Professional credentials, please.
Roads aren't always meant for trucks
If a road is designed in a way that makes it hard to navigate a tractor trailer, it's probably a good idea for the truck driver to avoid that road. Just a few blocks away is Tremont/Columbus Ave., perfectly suited for such vehicles.
I didn't issue the parking permits, the City did
Stupid is as stupid does. In Europe, the curb would have been sloped so vehicles could park on sidewalks. You will notice that the trailer had a rear power lift, so parking at an angle works poorly for all the wheeled gear going in and out of the truck - it also had to have space behind for moving equipment in and out. Stupid people have no concept that goods need to be moved to city shops and restaurants, trash removed, and goods shipped out. It can't all be done with bicycles and pedestrians. Oh, yeah, some public transit buses need to get around too. Plain stupid for taxpayers to fund outside dining on widened sidewalks for privately owned restaurants. Buildings like the court house needed more set back if they wanted more front yard.
I agree with your comments, except for one point.
The truck was parked on the street to supply a movie set, which is not nearly as essential to the local community as delivering groceries or picking up trash.
Regardless of what permits the City may have issued to the film company, that's hardly a justification for partially blocking a through street at 9:30 on a Monday morning.
No, it looks like a road that
No, it looks like a road that was widened in a 1960s urban renewal project.
Mark is a Herald troll
Roads are never wide enough for him. According to him, the main flaw of 1960s urban renewal is that it didn't bulldoze enough of the city. Even when the road is really wide, if an accident happens, he still complains it wasn't wide enough.
Truth troll against lobbyests
All the pigs in the public trough advocating "livable cities" are in the business of making money off overpriced street redesigns. Worse, they think they are smarter than any road designers in the past 100 years. They are also short sighted. Roads narrowed 20-40 years ago for traffic calming never took cyclists into consideration, making travel far more dangerous for them. Massively excessive sidewalks on Mass Ave in Cambridge, and in front of Northeastern and BU are examples. Sidewalks are so wide, the best option is to put cycle tracks on part of them. Next will be Broadway in East Somerville where 4 lanes become 2 with bike lanes. 30' sidewalks in places, enough for a road and driving two buses down! Really, people are not that fat yet to need 20-30' sidewalks.
um
Have you ever, you know, walked on those sidewalks? Most of the time they're packed, and could use widening even more.
I do agree with you're qualm about the irresponsible placement of bike paths being plunked down wherever.
There should be a moment to place parking and a small curb to the left of the sidewalk, allowing bake paths to be between on street parking and the sidewalks.
The road options we have no are dangerous and don't work well. Cars and parking need to be separated.
Was the driver on Love Potion No. 9?
Was anyone else Blindsided by the truck? Boy, looks like they are going to have to take the bus to the Demolition Man. I bet a lot of injury laywers are going to give victims The Proposal. Will the drive be given Two Weeks Notice or 28 Days? I hope there wasn't too much Speed involved. It is great that we can make comments on The Net.
All seriousness, I hope everyone will be ok. Hope Floats for that wish.
Did she have a Premonition about the Crash?
I hope it wasn't Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close to Sandy.
Thank you
Thank you, you have won the Internet comments tonight. We can all go home now.
Lost control
Trying to keep it over 55?
Who got there first, I wonder?
EMS or film money seeking lawyers?
We did!
We did!
Harrison and Warren, looks like. And all this snark is great...
...but (obvious unfortunately of the injuries aside) that bus costs a little shy of $1,000,000 - and the MBTA only has 25 of them. This is going to impact the system's two most heavily-used lines (28 and 39) pretty badly. How much a 3-4 foot incursion into the front chassis can be repaired is anyone's guess - I suppose the really expensive stuff, the drivetrain, will be transferable to another chassis?
Also of note: unlike the vast majority of hollywood crews, this one seems to have parked legally...
only 25 buses?
fer real?
Yeah
Those lines get the fancy articulating buses, not the regular kind.
Convenient wiki page.
oh ooh oh...thx
I guess that makes it.....24 of them then.
The good news...
Spare parts for the other 24 buses.
If the truck was parked
If the truck was parked legally, then why is there a white line underneath it in the photo?
I believe you have to leave 10 feet
for other vehicles to pass you if there isn't a line, but there was a line here, so yes, the truck may have been illegally parked.
That being said, there are probably zero parking spots available in the entire city for a truck like that.
Truck probably got a special permit to park here
Filming a Hollywood movie in a city neighborhood requires extensive permitting ... surely this truck's parking spot was part of that permitting?
NECN says
NECN says yes.
http://www.necn.com/07/09/12/Officials-investigati...
Did it have a permit...
To park in the bus stop? Or park in the bus stop and outside the white line and not leave enough room for traffic to safely pass?
I'm knit picking I know, and it looks the bus driver obviously did something reckless or negligent, but the parking of that truck is still important.
The MBTA's heavy repair shop
The MBTA's heavy repair shop in Everett has the ability to replace the front end of a bus. Here is a link from archive.org of an old web site article from 1996 showing the process to repair a bus with heavy front end damage:
http://web.archive.org/web/20071217184323/http://m...
The model in question in the present accident is still in production from New Flyer, so the MBTA will be able to buy a new front end "cap" to replace the damaged one after the right-corner post is replaced. If the damaged bus had been a type no longer in production, then the MBTA would have had to fabricate from scratch more of the replacement body parts.
They do only have 25 of the New Flyer artics, 22 painted yellow for Route 28 and occasionally Route 39, and 3 painted silver for Washington St. service. Route 28 needs 13 out of the 22 yellow painted buses to meet the rush-hour schedule. The spare-ratio will be tighter with this one out long-term, but service should not suffer.
It can be repaired, but it will be expensive and take awhile.
Look how heavy the damage is
Look how heavy the damage is . Doesn't take a genius to realize that speed was a factor. MBTA bus drivers fly around the city with disregard for other drivers daily. constantly blowing red lights . They just had another crash by BPD headquarters last month. That bus took out the front lobby of the building. That bus was flying in a rainstorm. Visibility was near zero when that bus crashed... Yet the operator was traveling at a high enough speed to jump a curb and take out that lobby. the T needs to take a look at how it hires its drivers and how it punishes the ones that screw up like this.
A bus like this might have a different crush factor.
I wouldn't be suprised that a bus like this going 10-15 mph with no breaking might look like it does after crashing into a 20,000 pound parked object with a metal frame.
Oooh, those MBTA drivers.
Oooh, those MBTA drivers. When will they learn?
A million bucks for a bus?
A million bucks for a bus? Seriously? For that kind of coin you could get yerself a decent little jet:
Advanced diesel-electric bus
The bus is a tandem (articulated) bus with both diesel power and electric motors (hybrid drive) made by NFI, New Flyer Industries. Consider where the engine is and which wheels you need to drive. Drive the rear trailer wheels only? How would power get to the rear wheels of the front section? Trains in use today have big diesel engines that only power a generator, which then powers electric motors on the wheels. To brake, the motors become generators and energy is put into resistors on top and air cooled. New hybrid trains store some in batteries. There is a limit on how fast to charge the batteries from braking, how much they can store, cost, reliability, and lifetime. Typically not cost effective yet, but the MBTA is getting some anyway.
"Drive the rear trailer
"Drive the rear trailer wheels only? How would power get to the rear wheels of the front section?"
The T has plenty of diesel articulated buses which only have power at the third axle.
And I believe the T's hybrid artics only have power at the third axle as well.