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Masshole delays Green Line when he starts to bitch, whine

Commonwealth Avenue argument between SUV driver and trolley driver

After trying, but failing, to cut off a trolley at Linden Street and Comm. Ave. around 6:30 p.m., the driver of the Escalade could have backed off, let the trolley, and the other trolley coming from the other direction, through, then been on his way. But, no, of course not. As URNotinvisible shows, the guy got out of his land yacht and began yelling at the T driver.

As of 7 p.m., the T reported no problems due to yelling people standing on tracks, so presumably this particular logjam has been fixed (you didn't, however, ask about the signal problems at Park Street).

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Comments

what sort of person buys a Cadillac pickup truck, it's that sort of person.

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Don't hate the player, hate the game.

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Porque no los dos?

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That Ikea shelving just won't fit into a regular automobile, con sarniit!

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The bigger the truck the lower the IQ.

I'm gonna guess this loser wasn't arrested for blocking traffic like the pedestrian in Roslindale because drivers are never held accountable.

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people I know drives a giant, deluxe Dodge Ram, but he's a portly gentleman with a long commute between Boston and New Hampshire, and he doesn't drive like a humongous douche. (Granted, he may be an exception.)

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My nephew uses his to haul a boat, snow machines, etc., too. They can be fuel efficient for what they do if they have a diesel powerplant.

I doubt that Escallder has ever hauled anything beyond his enormous ego.

Useless trucks are useless.

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Legit heavy duty truck you use for your business (construction/landscaping/hauling/whatever) is an entirely different thing.

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So, move, butthead. Oh, trolley is very derail-sensitive.

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Or maybe because there wasn't a cop on scene unlike the ton of cops already there in Roslindale.

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Or the sort of person who buys and drives a truck for commuting because... TRUCK!

I've probably hauled more gear and mattresses in and on top of my coupe than this guy.

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Epic.

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'Tis the season for all the ill-advised vehicular hijinks you can think of at that intersection, and some you would never think of. Incoming college students = parents who have no clue how to drive in Boston. Add September 1 next week, and I think I'll just walk everywhere until at least September 3.

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about cyclist blocking busses from picking up pasangers.

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Oh, wait, I can, because it doesn't happen. Or the bus stays behind the cyclist before pulling in to the stop which takes, say, two or three seconds as the bike keeps going.

Let's focus on things that do happen, like those goddamn cyclists running down and maiming and killing pedestrians. Oh, wait, that doesn't happen either.

As Peter Furth said: "if cyclists are injuring and killing pedestrians, that's a problem, and we need to address it. But they don't."

What does block transit stops and injure and kill pedestrians? Gosh I can't imagine what. Tough to say.

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It's the obligatory reference to one of the five cases about cyclists hitting pedestrians in the past ten years. I know it's just trolling to snag some cycli....hey I see you what you did there but seriously no matter what kind of math you use, statistically, these cyclist-hitting-pedestrian cases are a miniscule fraction of the total cases of cars hitting everything else.

I'm that rare person who not only drives often in the city but cycles often to work whenever possible. Self absorbed people are jerks and dangerous to those around them, however a self absorbed pedestrian is slightly less dangerous than a cyclist and both are massively less dangerous than a 4000 pound mobile battering ram (when used improperly or.. properly depending on your level of sociopathy). The numbers involved and danger are not at all comparable.

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Bringing up bicycles in the context of this post is, of course, completely absurd. But since we're on the topic...

Sure, cyclists rarely kill pedestrians. I've never heard of it happening in Boston, though there have been incidents in NYC (as the previous commenter noted) and that very high profile case in SF.

But if you're trying to argue that cyclists never maim or injure pedestrians, you're out of your mind. One of my coworkers was crossing the street, in the crosswalk, with a walk signal, and got three teeth knocked out and her nose broken (and a bunch of other, lesser injuries) when a cyclist ran the red and knocked her down (he, of course, had a helmet on, so was able to pretty quickly pick himself up and flee the scene). My wife just last month got a giant bruise on her ribs and a laceration on her forearm when she refused to jump into the street and give up the sidewalk to a cyclist. I was hit in the arboretum a while back (commenters on this site called me a liar at the time), and got away with just some bruises and a big lump on the back of my hand. And that's just off the top of my head from my personal circle of acquaintances.

As long as I'm ranting, I've been waiting days for some bike related context to troll about this in. Here's my most recent interaction with a cyclist in Boston, earlier this week: I'm at a four way stop, turning left. My turn comes, and I make my left. As I do so, a bicyclist bombs through the intersection from the cross street, directly in front of my hood. He had been completely shielded from view by the waiting cars, and I only missed him by a foot or two, which really shook me up. I passed him, then he caught back up with me a block later, where we had this exchange.

Me: Hey, way to blow through the stop sign back there, jagoff.
Bike: You got something to say, asshole?
Me: Yeah, I almost killed you back there.
Bike: Oh, you're some kind of fucking tough guy? You're going to kill me?
Me: No, I said I almost killed you back there because you refuse to obey fucking traffic laws.
Bike: Fuck you, I don't have to obey shit.

And that, friends, is the attitude of the Boston bicyclist.

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No, that's the attitude of *a* Boston bicyclist.

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About unicorns running down the streets of Back Bay, and the week the T ran without any delays, and the thoughtful Dan Shaughnessy column, and the Trump Presidency, and the cell phone store replaced by a bookstore, and the mermaids swimming up and down the Charles, and other things that don't and won't actually happen.

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I, Donald Trump, pardon Hillary Clinton for any and all crimes involved with putting classified documents on that shitty little civilian server. And the other one.

Heh, heh. Heh.

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Adam you never fail to bring laughter to my day with perfect play on words. I just had to forward this to people I know who would get the humor of infamous Masshole driving at its finest!! CLASSIC

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Want to know what is wrong with the B line?
That second train is just sitting there when it should be running that guy over.

Really I just don't understand the point of having the fencing between train tracks all along Comm Ave EXCEPT where a street cross Comm Ave. Those should not be through routes and the fence, augmented with anti-tank mines, needs to be continuous. If you want to cross Comm Ave you just don't. Stay on the side you belong on.

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This guy has some good ideas

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" If you want to cross Comm Ave you just don't. Stay on the side you belong on."

Jes' sayin...

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Not Packard's corner, that's the Linden street crossing. Just next to Harvard.

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My Allston-fu is finally failing after all these years. When I saw that building in the background, I was thinking it was that ugly apartment building at Packards Corner sort of diagonally across from the supermarket.

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The one on the inbound corner of Comm Ave used to be a BU dorm called Hamilton House. BU sold it around 2004-2005 because it was run down and the repairs were too expensive, just as the first Student Village dorm opened up extra apartment beds on campus. Currently, Alpha Realty owns it (of course) and the "Strictly Apartment Rentals" that inhabits the sidewalk-level commercial space. It's one of those realtors that's a rental office for one particular rental group, but pretends to be a legit realtor.

That building also had a visible hole in an exterior wall with insulation popping out for several years, I often wondered how they got tenants.

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day award.

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Obviously arguing that the trolley swerved right in front of him and that he should have stayed in his lane. Good grief!

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He literally got out of the car and started arguing with the train driver. I advocate that the driver and the passengers should be legally allowed to collectively exit the train, toss his ass across Comm Ave with his truck tossed anywhere else but there.

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If I were a passenger I'd be tempted to sneak behind him and take the vehicle.

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It's because of idiots like this that we can't have unsignalized intersections that trust people to yield to trolleys. Instead, traffic lights with red arrows are going up all along Comm Ave, which waste everyone's time, especially trolley passengers.

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If that's Linden/Reedsdale as I think it is, then the *trolley* was actually given a stop sign to obey like 4 or 5 years ago instead of car traffic being told to yield to the trolley. So the trolley ends up having to make an often-times-unnecessary stop there.

Since it doesn't go far outbound before hitting the Harvard St stop, it doesn't get moving very quickly again either. So, people coming inbound who want to get to the things like Super 88 that are just west of Packard's Corner or the Pike have to cross there. They see the trolley come to a stop and take advantage. And the trolley ends up waiting until the light changes against them at Harvard before they can go again. It's dismal that anyone in this day and age things the TROLLEY has to stop there and put that stop sign up instead of expecting cars to yield there (especially since the cars have to cross 2 outbound lanes, both directions of trolley tracks, AND the carriage lane (that they can't see if there's an outbound train in the way) while dodging any cars coming straight at them from Reedsdale!).

So, my bet is the driver is giving the trolley driver a piece of his mind about how stop signs work, especially if the trolley driver treated it like a rolling yield so as not to slow down the rest of the track behind him during afternoon rush hour.

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You're right. A small part of the blame lies with Boston's and/or the T's traffic engineering staff, who set up this ambiguous right-of-way situation.

https://goo.gl/maps/MEGlx

Besides the fact that the "yield to trolley" sign is nonstandard, in a confusing spot, and faded (and hanging upside down at the time this Street View was captured), I don't think yield signs and stop signs are supposed to be mixed at the same intersection.

Normally, you yield to oncoming traffic when turning left. You also normally yield to trains. Giving that oncoming train traffic a stop sign sure makes things confusing.

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Lets get back to the part where the other train runs him over and we collectively push his male-genital-replacement-truck into the Charles.

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