Globe: Revived plan for detour on Esplanade stirs outrage.

Universal Hub: Shut Storrow Drive!

If you remove both lanes of parallel parking from Beacon Street, between Clarendon and Arlington Streets, that should be plenty of room to detour all the Storrow traffic for those two blocks.

This section of Beacon Street would become temporarily two-way. To reduce the number of times traffic has to cross itself, you could even make it British-style, with eastbound traffic on the north side and westbound traffic on the south. Sure it would be unusual, but Boston already has plenty of interesting non-standard roads....

On the one hand, yeah, the tunnel is badly in need of repairs. Yet, putting a road through the Esplanade, even if it were temporary, might turn out to be permanent, and, in either case, inflicting tons of damage to the Esplanade, which could be expensive to repair, if it got repaired at all.

On the other hand, re-routing vehicular traffic through the adjacent residential neighborhoods
(i. e. Back Bay & Beacon Hill), could/would undoubtedly stir virulent outrage, and possibly stiff resistance on the part of the residents of those two areas.

Rerouting Storrow onto the Esplanade is a terrible idea. If they're concerned about fixing it quickly, they should just close that section of Storrow while they're fixing it. Heck, they should just close the whole road altogether as has been proposed on here before. It would sure make the parklands more enjoyable!