Memorial Drive

Just another morning on Memorial Drive, Adam Shutes reports.

The Globe has a long interview with the owner of the Mercedes SUV the bombing suspects allegedly carjacked. And Kevin Cullen recounts the Watertown firefight and the race to save Richard Donohue's life.

Drivers this morning were not prepared for yesterday's shutdown of the overpass on the Cambridge side of the BU Bridge - although they'll now have six months to get used to it.

Kathy reports traffic was tied up in knots on the Boston side. Nikki reports from on board a bus:

Driver of the CT2 is freaking out screaming obscenities at other drivers in this INSANE traffic by BU bridge.

The state Department of Transportation says it's shutting the overpass on the Cambridge side of the BU Bridge on Sunday for some major repairs:

All vehicles will be diverted to the surface roadways and through the BU Bridge/Brookline Street rotary, and back on to Memorial Drive.

The Storrow Pool is all fun and games until the top of a bus is peeled back, sending nearly three dozen people to the hospital.

Is there any way to prevent this in the future? Clearly, the signs aren't working. Bring back the cowbells the old MDC used to attach to poles across onramps? Station troopers at every entrance? Suggestions?

Here are some thoughts from Twitter last night as the events unfolded:

Shortly before 7 a.m., a driver managed to firmly wedge his box truck into the underpass eastbound at the Harvard Bridge, causing a nice little blockage just as rush hour was getting underway. He tried moving the truck back, but all he did was set of a shower of sparks from where his truck's roof scraped against the top of the underpass.

UPDATE: After working on the truck for around 45 minutes without success, the Cambridge Fire Department ordered an electric saw to the scene to cut the top of the fool thing off.

Just as the Cambridge blackout was lifting, three cars failed to occupy the same space on Memorial Drive by the Mass. Ave. Bridge. Brian D'Amico, who took this and several other photos, reports two people were taken to local hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries.

An officer at the scene stated that even after the Accord struck the second car, it kept accelerating forward for awhile.

Earlier, around 10:25 a.m., a roving UHub photographer snapped a car taking things one step at a time on Morton Street, near Blue Hill Avenue, in Mattapan:

Top photo copyright Brian D'Amico.

Roving UHub photographer Daniel Weintraub stopped roving long enough to snap a photo of the truck with the newly peeled back roof on Memorial Drive around 11:30 this morning (also note the scaffolding for the oculus installation on MIT's Great Dome, and yes, that is mentioned partially because ye editor likes saying "oculus").

A driver with impaired reading skills plowed his truck into the ceiling of the Storrow tunnel eastbound this morning. The ceiling refused to yield, forcing the top of his truck to peel back like a sardine can and backing up Storrow Drive onto Soldiers Field Road way back by the Harvard Business School in Allston and causing similar delays on Memorial Drive when Storrow refugees flooded that road, lord!

Michael Nichols tweeted shortly after 9 a.m.:

Just drove past it. Box truck stuck with most of its metal roof bent back from colliding with underside of tunnel.

State Police announced today they've terminated Adam Paicos, a trooper caught off duty driving the wrong way on Memorial Drive in April. In a statement, State Police add:

On a date in May, Paicos was observed by a senior command officer engaged in further conduct unbecoming a state trooper, also while off-duty. Paicos was still on probationary employment status when the incidents occurred. The internal investigation into the Memorial Drive incident is ongoing.

Happened on April 3, WBZ reports.

Leslie Jones photographed a couple of MDC cops looking at the aftermath of truck vs. underpass on Memorial Drive at the Harvard Bridge on Jan. 18, 1944:

20 ton truck doesn't clear 9 ft. underpass.

The photo, by the way, is part of the BPL's huge collection of Jones photos of traffic accidents. It's a must see for fans of crushed cars, cabs, trucks and buses from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s that are flipped over, wrapped around trees, in the water and scattered in little pieces, sometimes with occupants still in them.

Posted under this Creative Commons license.

UPDATED 10:45 a.m. with new info from State Police.

State Police report they're looking for a guy who groped a 23-year-old Boston resident as she rode her bicyle along the Charles around 7:35 p.m. yesterday.

According to state police, a man on a bicycle "came up and grabbed her buttocks from behind before fleeing on the bike over the Boston University Bridge."

State Police describe the assailant as black and wearing a black water-resistant-type jacket, baggy gray sweatpants, a white bike helmet and sneakers. State Police say they doubt the attack is related to a series of unsolved attacks across the river on the Esplanade, none of which involved a man on a bicycle.

Anybody with info can contact State Police at 617-727-6780.

MassDOT reports a truck got stuck under the Longfellow on Memorial Drive around 6:00 a.m., shutting the road, of course. And not just any truck: A big-ass truck.

Good Morning Gloucester has the Webcam pics to prove it.

Also, just like the state warned us, Morrissey Boulevard is closed due to wicked high tides, as Lauren Glynn shows us:

Does the revived Shell sign dream of greater things?

Wicked Local Cambridge reports the Charles River's other gas-company sign has gotten a $100,000 upgrade that includes energy-efficient LEDs.

Around 8:45, New England Roadways tweeted:

Memorial Drive westbound at Mass. Ave. - unauthorized truck struck overpass - debris, etc. everywhere.

The truck was still there around 9:30, Andy Weiskopf reports:

Truck really wedged in there, roof peeled back. Hope all OK.

Now an ex-beer truck Photo by Chris Devers, used under this license.

Terri O'Rourke reports a beer truck had its back sheared off, apparently by an alcohol-mad tree, on Memorial Drive by JFK Street this morning.

[I]t's a beer lovers paradise ... They're unloading all of it from back of the truck onto the sidewalk, on Memorial Drive.

The road was closed in both directions to let workers haul away the beer. Chris Devers tweets he saw cases of Heineken as he drove by.

Wicked Local Cambridge reports on an incident involving the driver of a truck from a shredding company shredding off the top of his truck on Thursday.

It's time for the annual circus animal march down Mem. Drive, Msgr. O'Brien Highway and into the Garden, starts tonight at 7 p.m.

MIT Police report on an incident Monday night involving six banditos in bandanas buzzed into a dormitory by a student expecting visitors:

An MIT officer followed the fleeing white Mitsubishi as it drove along Memorial Drive and several other streets before hitting a parked car, at which time all suspects exited the vehicle and fled the scene. Massachusetts State Police and Boston Police assisted in searching the area to no avail.

One of the suspects failed to pull up his bandana, was described as Asian, heavyset, with short cropped hair.

Via Wicked Local Cambridge.

Haven't found a link just yet, but right outside of my office, an 18-wheeler lodged itself under the pedestrian bridge just west of BU Bridge on Memorial Drive. It seems that he was heading from the Allston-Brighton tolls to Microcenter and inexplicably missed the left turn into their parking lot, missed the warning signs for low height at the Shell station, and ended up 70% of the way under the pedestrian bridge before coming to a complete stop.

EDIT: Channel 5 has more details and video/pictures. Thanks, J258.

Saul Blumenthal took a walk along Memorial Drive by the Charles River this afternoon.