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Fung Wah buses don't drive on the Leverett Connector, do they?
By adamg on Tue, 04/03/2007 - 1:20pm
Lewis Forman notes the latest plunging-vehicle news and wonders:
With another vehicle falling off the Leverett Connector loop and onto a vehicle 70 feet below, is it now time to say that ramp is extremely unsafe? I'm still grappling with how a 3 and a half foot (a personal guess) barrier is supposed to stop a vehicle from going over the edge. Even at low speeds, let alone a heavily loaded tractor trailer.
And why, in our infinite wisdom (don't we have MIT close by?), there wasn't a much safer design done? I'm sure the extra $300,000 or so on the bloated Big Dig project would have gone unnoticed. Kind of like the ceiling tiles in the Ted Williams Tunnel. ...
Earlier:
Yet another Charlestown ramp plunge.
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Comments
Those loops have been there for years
They predate the entire Big Dig, in fact -- there was a separate project called CANA (Central Artery North Area) that removed elevated structures from City Square.
Loops have been there for years, not necess. those loops
The CANA-built loops were all temporary structures, and the current loops were built over the last 10 years.
Right...
The interchange there over the gravel pit is old, but when I commuted through there between 2002 and 2004, I remember frequent changes in which loops actually carried traffic. I definitely remember loops being torn down and new ones being built. You can tell that many of the loops are quite new because of the types of supports on them and because the concrete panels all still match and are free of patches.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
I had no idea...
I believed them to be rebuilt during the Big Dig. I don't remember them being THAT tight of a loop though.
Well...
I don't know about any of that, but this has to be the best headline you've had all year, Adam :-)
drunk, speeding, overloaded
The loops are perfectly fine, as long as you're not some combination of drunk, speeding, or overloaded with a high center of gravity. I doubt they're any worse than your average cloverleaf. Meanwhile, guardrail heights are determined by national standards. Maybe those need to be revised.
Loopy
"Drunk, speeding and overloaded is no way to go through life, son."
Sorry, had to say it.
But Massachusetts is Different
Gravity doesn't apply here. Never heard of it.
Seriously, those SHOULD be governed by national standards. Truth be told, Massachusetts is nationally known among highway engineers as the state that typically ignores national standards on a regular basis.
When they don't just flat out screw up and forget about the depth of the decking in the designs.
My dad has been at traffic engineer conventions where mass highway types have walked out after the sixth or seventh pot shot/joke about "except in Massachusetts". Brutally bad reputation. Even "mass highway" is antiquated - most states consolidated their transportation of all sorts into a single department years ago.
It is always fun driving Dad through the area, and having him point out the signalling violations on US roads, the signage problems, the antiquated guard rails that should have been replaced with federal funding had anybody gotten their act together and actually claimed it.
So don't count on federal regs to keep you safe around here or to discount design flaws. Chances are, they were ignored if they were not convenient, assuming anybody even bothered to check that they existed.
Pretty serious allegations
Highway standards are legal requirements. So are you really intending to allege widespread criminal behavior, or just casting aspersions?
Self-Casting Aspersions
Highway standards are standards. They are not criminal laws. You are clearly not versed in the system. Get your clue.
MA is notorious for ignoring standards in design. Like I said, dad knows what he is looking at because he had to take care of it for another state. When I see things like a right turn arrow always lit on US 3, newly built merge lanes that are way too short and have obstrtucted sight lines, lane drops AFTER exits (Sullivan Square) or 100m before (Derby St) the long illegal "right turn permitted on red" signs and far to many "no right on red" signs, the lack of left turn refuges and lanes, and so on, I'm amazed that Massachusetts gets any highway funding at all (since withholding funding for substandard design is the prime enforcement mechanism).
See also concrete abnormalities that the Zakim bridge designer had to sue to get fixed, ramp railings being 2" short, MassPike not ever updating median barriers to current standards, etc. Grandfathering? No, just an excuse pushed way too far.
land is scarce and expensive here
Many of our roads date back to the 1600s and 1700s, and even those built more recently are being fit into very constricted footprints in order not to hog expensive land or take large amounts of private property.
Given these constraints, it's perfectly understandable that we don't have lots of left-turn lanes and extravagantly long merge lanes. The standards of Arizona and California don't necessarily make sense here.
My favorite local example of using a small amount of land effectively and inventively is the full cloverleaf where the Jamaicaway crosses Route 9.
Short onramps
As a driver, though, I find it kinda sucky - you don't have all that much time to decelerate for the sharp turn onto Huntington/Boylston from the Jamaicaway north, and getting onto the Jamaicaway south is always fun because you never know when some idiot is going to come over the bridge at 65 m.p.h.
But the absolute worst example of Massachusetts road design has to be the exit into and the entrance out of the service area on 128 south in Weston (Newton?). Maybe they made sense back in 1937 or whenever, but they're absolutely awful today.
I liked the Pillar House in Newton(?)
Instead of tearing down a historic house and restaurant, they simply built the exit ramp around it. Unfortunately it's not there anymore.
Maybe someday a new restaurant can be built there to replace it? The Highway Department could use the money from selling or renting this land again.
The Pillar House:
I remember the Pillar House, in Newton rather well myself. It was a cool restaurant, with good food. Fond memories here--our whole family going out for dinner on my (late) dad's birthday, or, even just for the sake of going out to dinner, and, sometimes, we'd all even go to a drive-in movie afterwards. It was cool.
Highways
Highway construction standards are incorporated into state law via the Code of Massachusetts Regulations, like the building codes. As you mention, the Federal Highway Administration is also involved in enforcing the standards since it foots a lot of the bills. But if standards were knowingly not enforced and led to accidents, there could be criminal charges. Isn't that just the theory in the prosecution of the ceiling collapse?
Now here's where I think our confusion arose. Some of your examples are not part of the state code, because you're talking about design guidelines and "best practices" versus minimum requirements. That's not to say you don't have a point there, but that's what you get for relying on human beings to do your engineering. Especially at Mass Highway wages. I do agree that Mass. needs to make changes to the way it runs its highways.
I also agree that a lot of outdated highways are seriously in need of upgrading. Unfortunately all the criticism of the Big Dig has probably made Mass. residents even more resistant to major projects.
But I disagree that other problems were serious yet ignored. The Zakim Bridge concrete was corrected, but as I understood it there was some disagreement between engineers over whether the excessive steel was a problem. It seemed like a maintenance problem at best; never an immediate safety problem. The Leverett Connector ramp railings were built short in some places due to a mistake, which was caught after the fact and addressed by adding railing. I don't know what you're referring to about the MassPike median barriers. Aren't they in the midst of updating a lot of them?
Anyway, as far as your suggestion that I get a clue, you have no idea who I am, and I have no idea who you are, but I don't think I've said anything disrespectful to you. I just think one is better off using logos, not ethos, when arguing online.
Not to mention the time when
a panel on the ceiling of the South Central Artery tunnel that leads to the Airport and/or I-93 South that collapsed, because it hadn't been put in correctly to begin with, killing a Jamaica Plain woman. I'm admitedly not any kind of engineer or whatever, but it's incredible how they've put people in charge (ex-Gov. Mitt Romney had been put in charge at the time), who really don't know what the hell they're doing.
Come to think of it, was the big dig really necessary??
Frankly, I've got my doubts, especially since they're way overbudget, not to mention, behind schedule. There's so much other stuff that money couldn've been used for, iimo, although I do see one objective of the big dig: the rerouting of traffic around town, as opposed to right through the heart of town, the way it used to be routed.
clean, fast, tight
and familiar with the local scene
Has something changed?
Ron is right - those ramps were put in before the main part of the Big Dig opened - I remember them being built in the early-to-mid 90s while I watched from my 11th floor window at MGH.
HOWEVER, it is possible that something has changed or gone wrong in the interim. I suspect the earlier General Lee may have had something to do with the contour being changed by snow and ice. This one happened in the rain. Is there some oil build up there? Speed is also a factor, as is heavy over-loading of trucks that is typical around here. No enforcement means heavy truck + heavy throttle = yeeehhhhaaaaa.
Maine, where the truck was from, is also notorious for shitbag trucks as they don't mandate insurance (or at least didn't for a long time) and don't inspect. This may have changed, but there were quite a few people greasing palms to keep that situation going.
If cars keep hurtling over
If cars keep hurtling over the side, I think we can safely assume that something's wrong.
I wonder how long it will take the geniuses to determine what to do about it.
On a smiliar note- with cars falling from the sky, that gravel yard must be a scary place to work. I doubt OSHA would approve.
One would think
that after that fatality last summer, they'd be off their butts and into action really doing something about the problems.
I also might add
that it might take more fatalities and serious injuries before something finally is done to fix the problem.