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Beer truck ends up over edge of 93 after crash
By adamg on Fri, 08/09/2013 - 2:22pm
Truck over the guardrail. Photo by Matt.
Update, 4:15 p.m.: As crews began to try to get the cab back behind the guard rail, the MBTA shut Orange Line service, just in case, because the tracks run right under the crash site.
A crash involving a big truck and a small truck on I-93 north in Charlestown around 2:10 p.m. sent the larger vehicle dangling over the guardrail and the driver of the smaller truck to the hospital.
The larger truck, a Michelob tractor-trailer, ended up with its cab dangling off I-93 over the Leverett Connector, in the same general area as the voodoo Globe-truck incident a few days ago.
State Police shut the road in both directions as firefighters tried to deal with a detached fuel tank that was leaking across the road. Debris showered the connector ramp below.
Dangly bits. Photo by Boston Fire Department.
Another view of the truck. Photo by Eric J. Wildman.
With the road shut, traffic on I-93 quickly backed up, through the O'Neill tunnel and as far back as Neponset Circle. Both a sand truck and a wrecker heading for the scene were stuck in traffic.
In the tunnel. Photo by Matt Thompson.
Truck on the verge. Photo by Boston Fire Department.
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Comments
Mich ultra? You mean water
Mich ultra? You mean water truck.
Adam, make up your mind...
Is it a beer truck or Michelob truck?
you can go home now...
...drop the mike and treat yourself to an early Friday afternoon.
+ a bunch!
Thanks
I'll salute you with some Berkshire Traditional Ale, and hope that this clears up soon.
ummm
Is this about the same spot where that Globe truck was hit earlier this week? (or last week)
That was my first thought
That was my first thought when I heard about this. Kinda odd!
Go Home Truck!
Yer drunk!
almost the same spot
as the Globe truck. You can see some of the temporary guardrail just in front of the water truck.
Google Traffic
Google Traffic is currently showing southbound as backed up to Medford Sq and northbound is jammed all the way into the Braintree Split. Holy $#!^
Also
Showing the Pike is jammed from 93 in both directions. Under the harbor westbound, and all the way to the BU Bridge eastbound.
Has the T
...shut down in solidarity yet?
(UPDATE: Yes, of course it has!)
orange line
Just went thru N station and the orange line is now closed and is being bused from wellington to backbay. Now I'm sitting on a 111 on N Washington in the north end in traffic.
Ah yup, you can't get there from here today. Bad day for travel in Boston
The good news is that there
The good news is that there was NO Tobin Bridge traffic. I was home at my normal time
best thing
The best thing was there was ZERO traffic on the Tobin LOL The 111 just zipped right up, over, and off the Tobin!
i hope not
Was everyone okay? This is becoming an epidemic!
off
Off as in OFF ramp. The 111 takes the first exit after you get over the bridge in Chelsea!
Dangly bits
Another Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law fan, I see.
I heard that traffic on 93
I heard that traffic on 93 Northbound is backed up beyond the Split all the way down to the South Pole and up and around to the North Pole, where the backup for 93 Southbound begins. Hopefully everyone has empty bottles in their cars, a la "Dumb and Dumber."
Looks like that drunken Haitian Voodoo lady
Who hexed the Statie earlier this week, after she launched a Globe delivery van forty feet into the air, really did have some juice.
Isn't this roughly the same location?
Voodoo Lady
Shakin the stick, driving me crazy!
Parameters
She must have had her spell parameters in the wrong order.
At least we will learn from this
And quickly act to build a bigger guaradra...HAHAHAHAHAHA, almost said it with a straight face.
Who needs terrorists?
Routine traffic accidents are enough to cripple our meager road system here that lacks zero excess capacity and alternate routes. Instead of doing something sensible like building in redundancy, millions of dollars are spent removing vehicle lane miles (VLM) in Massachusetts and making bike lanes instead.
Yeah, sure, we're a great place to host the Olympics! This truck accident saved taxpayers a bundle on study, because the answer is that transportation is already lacking without added strain.
LOL
There's no such thing as redundancy in roads, since capacity is filled by virtue of it being there, not the other way around. Any "redundancy" will just make traffic even worse, as people become even less equated with alternative traffic routes.
You can't fix human nature, you can only engineer around it. And building LA style freeways in Boston would only make things exponentially worse. Especially for residents.
Clearly incorrect theory
capacity of roads are not filled everywhere, just where needed. I-93 and I-95 are packed around Boston, but not so much in northern NH and northern Maine. Clearly the road would be congested there if there were any truth at all to the theory. Is I-90 a parking lot in Wyoming or South Dakota? No. False theory. It doesn't take terrorists to demonstrate the fragility and under-designed nature of our transportation system. One thing to be said for bike lanes is that loss of one would have little impact.
Redundancy
Like, RAIL LINES that actually TRANSPORT PEOPLE? Or, maybe PUBLIC TRANSIT?
There's a bike lane on I-93?
I know your zeal, but you're a bit off on this one. The Commonwealth just spent BILLIONS on this stretch of road (okay, not the whole amount on this one part, but still) yet nothing was done for bicycles. There's no way a completely redundant roadway system could be built at this area. 20 lanes under the Hub? Two Zakim Bunker Hill Bridges?
Have you and Saklad ever met up? Oh, that conversation would be fun to watch.
Idiotic plan to bury roads at fault
The Billions spent was excessive because more cost-effective elevated roads and rail lines are disliked by current urban planners. That also wouldn't put gas and oil tank trucks on local roads as the big dig has.
Having an extra margin of capacity does not mean duplicating routes. Its better to have multiple routes to get from A to B. For example, if there were an inner beltway, traffic could go around trouble spots.
With anti-transportation policies, people have to accept that equals anti-growth and live with being a sleepy, provincial town.
Not a buried road
Look, here's what I'm saying-
Not putting bike lanes in on city streets wouldn't have kept traffic from getting majorly f-ed yesterday. The inner belt wouldn't have helped either. Heck those people backed up at Braintree could have taken 128 or the Pike to get around. If the truck had gone over within a half mile of where it went, the inner belt would have been screwed too.
Sometimes it is policy decisions. You are stretching in this case.
Google traffic layer snaps showed 128 also packed.
Google traffic layer snaps showed 128 also packed. I-90 also showed red, though not sure if in both directions all inside 128.
Elevated is more cost effective?
If your dad builds bridges for a living, it is for him.
Otherwise HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
The cost to society of the resulting blight counts too, and so does throwing road salt around because it is "cheap".
You Still Really Don't Know How to Present an Argument
For this criticism, it seems you took something sensible - existence of alternate routes - and frame it in something non-nonsensical. No possible design is possible to alleviate an incident like this. It's too major an artery for anything to save it.
The logic of having multiple routes is fine. But multiple routes is means increase the ways to reach an area from more directions. Not to provide redundancy as in the ability to duplicate a top-capacity highway route. The Inner-Belt loop would the the last example to argue, it wouldn't have save this incident and there's major probabilities that its costs is far worse than you like (Cambridge would have not fared well with the loops, that may even affect the tech development of MIT including the tech explosion in the 70's and 80's) than its benefits.
Also, I view alternative routes as multi-modal network. Like the Orange Line as a redundant line and vice-versa with I-93. I sense you no hint you are including that in your considerations (and if you do, it would help to include that thought as it indicates balance rather than just looking for efficiency as you claim rather than to be pro-car - unless you view pro-car as the most efficient way which we then have a problem here). For increasing capacity, it would be more effective per-dollar if we improve the Orange line which would help alleviate I-93 too.
All memed up
How a Herald photographer got his photos
Mark Garfinkel had some great photos of the truck, which he obviously got from close up. He explains how he got so close: