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Duck Boat vs. car on Mass. Ave
By adamg on Thu, 11/05/2009 - 3:34pm
SuperMark posts a photo of a Duck Boat that tried to occupy the same space as a car on Mass. Ave. northbound between Boylston and Newbury this afternoon. Traffic, he tweets, was all messed up.
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Comments
Would it be safe to describe the accident
as a "quack up"?
Who insures duck boats?
AFLACK!?
it was a quack-cident!
it was a quack-cident!
judging by the car, this is
judging by the car, this is reason number 124 on why you shouldn't cut off a large commercial vehicle.
And reason number google ...
That such huge vehicles perhaps don't belong in the city - especially when the driver is SUPPOSED to be distracted while being a tour guide.
It would help if they could quack down on the crosswalk violations I see from these pieces of quack downtown.
Any realtors here who can
Any realtors here who can show sirlygrrll a nice place in the suburbs? Second thread today she's graced us with information on what a city is or isn't. And what she's describing as a city is very clearly an isolated hamlet.
She's already got one
Swirly already _has_ a nice place in the suburbs. She's telling the people who live in Boston (she doesn't) what we ought to do. But she's an expert, so shut up. See how she's already fixed Meffuh? No duck boats there, nossir!
In case you haven't noticed ...
1. I don't live in a suburb. The 51st most densely populated community in the nation is not a suburb when you consider it is bounded by the 5th most dense in a continuum with Boston. A part of a swath of urb less than 10 miles from the center of Boston would be within any other large city. Just because it happens to have a separate local government from Boston doesn't make it suburban. I probably live closer to Boston City Hall than Adam does, and I can see the Pru and Hancock from my living room. Check out census.gov for what really makes a suburb.
2. I work downtown and have seen ugly encounters with quackboats that ignore crosswalks and plow full speed ahead toward people crossing State Street near Quincy Market as if they aren't there. Go check it out sometime ... it might take 10 minutes before you see it happen yourself.
City or suburb?
I'd call Medford some of each. South Medford around Medford and Main Streets feels like city. West Medford out by Lower Mystic Lake feels like suburb, as does the area east of I-93 towards Wright's Pond.
I love it....
...when you city people have these "You call that the city???" battles, and each side proclaims to be grittier than the other.
1. 2. 3...
1. Yes you do. Meffuh is a suburb of Boston. The dictionary says so, and so does the Medford Historical Society. Being a city does not preclude being a suburb. Either you're right about that and all the people who use it parenthetically, as in "Medford (a suburb of Boston)," are wrong... or ... you're wrong. Really, it's a suburb. I know it makes you really upset, but you have two choices: get over it or keep amusing me terribly.
2. I hate the duck boats. They're ugly. They're accidents waiting to happen. The sight lines are terrible. They slow down traffic. But who should be driving fast in Boston anyway? As for the pedestrians, if the drivers are bad, the cops should bust them. Propensity of a certain kind of vehicle or person to break the law isn't a reason to discriminate against them. If they keep getting busted, the city will make more money and the bad duck boat drivers will eventually go away. Busting the duck boats could be a great new source of revenue.
3. Nyah nyah.
They're not that big
They're about the size of a normal delivery truck that you see all day in the city. Hardly huge.
On top of that, I believe
On top of that, I believe they employ two people, a driver and a tour guide.
Last, it's clear the car was the driver at fault.
The way it's flipped around suggest they were in the right lane, tried cutting of the duckboat while merging left, and caught a fender, flipping them around the front.
They're lucky they didn't kill themselves or end up on the sidewalk killing someone else.
This is a bad area anyways. I've frequently see people in that right line try to cut across three lanes to get onto the left lane to turn onto the Pike.
Meanwhile
You've got drivers who find themselves stacked up in the left-turn storage lane on Mass Ave to the Pike westbound swerving right, to get back into the thru lanes. And pedestrians in clueless / texting / stoned oblivion walking in all directions against the lights. Truly an urban clusterf*ck.
And speaking of pedestrians, why the HELL doesn't BTD give Mass & Boylston an all-walk cycle? The left turn light on the southbound side has helped some, but GOD that's a crazy intersection!
That is all; carry on. Quack-quack.
One person
I went on a Duck Tour once with an out-of-towner, and there was one person running the show. Not a big deal, IMHO.
Oh great
Now, we have to throw "duck boats" into the neverending car/pedestrian/bike rumble...