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Man hit by trolley on Huntington Avenue
By adamg on Wed, 07/29/2009 - 11:30pm
Around 11 p.m. at Huntington and Forsyth, Boston_Fireman tweets.
Mark Epstein tweets from the scene that the victim appeared conscious as he was put in the ambulance:
Was yelling as a large crowd formed.
He has more reports from the scene.
Jeff Purser tweets:
I was on trolley that stuck a man near Northeastern University. Heard horn. Brakes. Thump.
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Comments
worst intersection for
worst intersection for pedestrians ever. I hope he's ok... :/
agreed
Yes, agreed, this is the worst set of intersections for peds ever. The civil engineers deserve a "worst ever" award for this one. I was stuck with my wife and two small children in this intersection a couple weeks ago (we followed the signals closely) and commented, "this is a lawsuit waiting to happen."
When I was attending Northeastern in the early 1980s,
the school began construction of an elevated pedestrian bridge that would have crossed Huntington Avenue near the present T platforms, which would have obviated the need for folks to cross the street at-grade.
Guess what - The Northeastern-hating NIMBY abutters got the project stopped.
Pediestrian bridge
Not wild about these bridges, they are a way to avoid good traffic signal engineering. I can't imagine the students taking 30 steps up to avoid crossing either.
Yeah
The one on Mem Drive next to the public pool gets about as much foot traffic as the left lane on the Mass Pike.
That semi that missed MicroCenter a few weeks ago almost did us all a favor.
The Brookline Village overpass
Over Rte. 9 is shut completely; it was too much of a crime magnet.
Poor design
Pedestrian bridges can be crime attractors, but something like the one you mentioned is in a league all its own. I'm not sure why concrete stairwells that feature no sight line from the outside and blind corners seemed like a good idea. Assuming you survived the ascent the bridge itself offered extremely poor sight lines from the street. High concrete walls on either side keep people from stumbling off, but offer plenty of hiding space for criminals.
The Mem Drive ped bridge
I thought I heard that the work on that one had been finished, then I walked over it, and it still looked like it should be condemned.
I think it doesn't get used much because (besides looking dangerous, shored up precariously like that, and with the broken concrete walk and the temporary chain-link, etc.), is that those ramps constitute quite a long linear distance.
Do you want 4 minutes of walking, close to half of it uphill, just to cross the street? Possibly plus having to walk to and from the bridge, rather than just scamper across the street where you want to?
Intersection O' Death
It really is my least favorite intersection in Boston. I don't even know how you could possibly go about fixing it, though the above-mentioned pedestrian bridge idea would help. It's a deathtrap for people on foot, and a traffic sewer for vehicles. I've spent ten minutes sitting on a bus trying to get from one side to the other. Inching closer and closer and closer, but never really getting anywhere.
Hmm. I've long referred to
Hmm. I've long referred to the St. Stephens/Westland/Mass Ave intersection as the Intersection of Death. The Parker/Huntington one is annoying, but manageable.
agreed.
agreed.
I'm curious about this
I'm curious about this statement and those made by a few others regarding the intersection. I am somewhat, though not intimately familiar with it. How is it worse than any of the other intersections in that area? I've driven it, biked it, bussed it, and trolleyed it, but never noticed it being significantly worse. Just by looking at a map and satellite image, I'm also not seeing it. I am perfectly willing to believe your testimony, but I'm curious about the specifics.
he was not in a crosswalk.
he was not in a crosswalk. it was across from punters and you aren't supposed to cross the tracks there.
does anyone know if he's alive?
i saw him under there when i drove by.
man is ok
boston.com says he sustained foot injuries that were not life threatening.
I was there on the corner by
I was there on the corner by Punters. I saw him wheeled from the train into the ambulance and he was screaming and crying, but seemingly free of life threatening injuries.
I blogged about this
I blogged about Universal Hub & Twitter coverage of this incident: http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/a-brea...
Then I can email about the blog about the UH about the Twitter
'coverage' of this incident. And then I can text about IMing about that email.
And in the end, we can all participate in one big, macabre accident rubber-necking, devoid of any analysis or constructive value:
There's nothing preventing people with actual useful information on an accident from reporting it to appropriate authorities, and in more than 140 characters, rather than making interested parties trawl the vast wasteland of Twitter.
I realize Twitter is like an annoying swarm of gnats to some ...
But I think the point of his post was not to point out how Twitter is replacing professional journalists or somesuch, but simply that Twitter is a possibly useful new channel for professional journalists to monitor for possible stories/sources - and that my post was an example of that.
Yeah, if I were a real reporter sitting in a real newsroom, I would've filled out the story with more details, preferably by getting my lazy ass down to the scene or, at a minimum, calling up my sources or the PR person at BFD, etc. But as it was, real reporters didn't actually cover this until this morning, via a brief in the paper. Well, OK, somebody actually made a call last night, but it wasn't posted until the print stories went online.