I-93

Mark Garfinkel reports on a mannequin that appears to be about to pull an Orange Line from a billboard just past the Zakim at the Charlestown/Somerville line:

... Two calls were placed to Boston and Somerville fire departments regarding a possible suicidal man on top of a billboard yesterday morning. ...

Mark also provides a photo.

Might be good to avoid towns with names beginning with M today:

Channel 4 reports flames shot 20 to 30 feet in the air when manholes exploded on Main Street in Medford around 10:30 a.m. and that several thousand people are now without power.

William Fleurant tweets traffic is, as you might expect, a mess there (where 38, 16 and I-93 come together).

MBTA Police report power went out at the Malden Orange Line station, trapping one person in an elevator.

Take that, WGBH! The Carpenters Center reports workers today installed the giant LED screen thingee on the side of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters HQ now rapidly nearing completion off the Expressway in Dorchester:

... Although it is 50% transparent, it is capable of displaying a 400 x 600 pixel image which is approximately a 1 megapixel photo. The display can handle millions of colors.

The display will be the highest-resolution transparent LED display in the world and will be seen by over 280,000 viewers per day. There are only one or two transparent LED installations in the US which are approximately half the resolution of this display and 1/3 the potential brightness - making this sign clearly visible in the middle of the day. ...

With photos of the behemoth screen.

The state's opened up its traffic cameras to the public, so now you can see what state traffic engineers see along Rte. 128, the Southeast Expressway, Rte. 3 north of 128, three spots on I-93 between 128 and the Zakim and near the Sagamore Bridge.

Man dies in rollover on I-93 south in Andover.

Thanks to Beth for the headline suggestion.

Lilly J tweets:

Holy car accident Batman! Traffic at a total standstill for miles on 93S. Major multicar accident near exit 11.

Smartraveler says traffic is blocked all the way back to the O'Neill Tunnel.

Around midnight on I-93 north in Medford; taken to Mass. General.

Lori Magno shot the accident aftermath.

Channel 5 tweets a truck has wrapped itself around a Jersey barrier on 93 north by Sullivan Square and is leaking oil onto the lower deck is part-way on the other side of the highway, see link below to photos. At 9:06 a.m., Boston Police tweeted two lanes of 93 north wee shut. "Expect major delays," they advised.

Republican legislators in Massachusetts have finally figured out how to increase their ranks: Import them from New Hampshire - if only for one issue (to protest a proposed toll at the state line; wouldn't it be funny if they all got parking tickets while down here?)

Three seriously injured in five-car crash early this morning, Channel 5 reports.

Channel 4 reports State Police shut down a lane on 93 south in Wilmington this morning so that troopers could investigate an accident that happened two days ago.

Channel 5: Jackknifed Truck Jams Boston Traffic.

Specifically, a jackknifed truck in the northbound side of the O'Neill Tunnel.

Globe study: All the Big Dig did was push traffic congestion elsewhere.

Channel 4 employee has terrifying encounter with some long black thing hanging from the tunnel ceiling this morning. They could call it Diggy.

15-vehicle pileup shuts O'Neill Tunnel for 45 minutes.

The Southeast Distressway lived up to its name this afternoon, with some people getting stuck in the HOV lane for more than an hour after one car ran out of gas and two more broke down, according to report after report on WBZ's Traffic on the 3s.

No, not that lady up in New Hampshire. Associated Press reports on a Lawrence man's guilty plea for shooting three Sox fans after game 4 of the 2004 ALCS (the Dave Roberts game):

As the men drove home along Interstate 93, some of them teased Rodriguez, a Yankees fan.

He pulled a gun and fatally shot Jose Rivera and wounded Raphael Tavares and Jose Viera.

Yoav now knows first hand what happens when you get a flat in the O'Neill Tunnel:

... I'm just cruising along (below the speed limit, thank you very much), when all of I sudden I hear a bang and feel a jerk on the back right side of the car. Sure enough, the tire pressure warning indicator lights up.

Unfortunately I had to go a little ways until I found a reasonable spot to pull over, because the right-hand lanes were full of cones and construction equipment.

In fact, I bet it was a stray piece of equipment or gear that caused my tire explosion. ...

I-93 shut at Southampton Street for 15 minutes as firefighters rushed to put out the fire in the ammo-filled camper on the northbound side.

Meanwhile, further north, part of the Leverett Connector is cracked. No cause for alarm, turnpike authority says, banning trucks weighing more than 40 tons just to be safe.

State honcho vows: No tolls on I-93. Which means that tolls on the turnpike will continue to not go away to help pay for the Big Dig.

Commute-a-holic, who lives west of Boston, is not happy:

... I don't understand why North Shore and South Shore drivers get a free ride into Boston, where as everyone who lives West of Boston need to continue to pay to get into the city. It is so unfair. ...

Jeff Cutler reports on an encounter of the mini-van Masshole kind in a Big Dig tunnel.

Miss Kelly says she doesn't object to porn, she just doesn't want big-boobed robots pushing sex and vodka on I-93 billboards:

Keep it in your own home, not on billboards on interstate highways. Ewwww.

This morning's gravel-truck smasharoonie on I-93 gets Sean Roche to thinking:

When the trolleys crashed on the D-Line, there was much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands about the MBTA's track record (pun intended). The Herald had a whole timeline of T incidents.

But, a truck crashes on the highway and there is rarely a recap of all the incidents on the highway and the accumulated lost time to travelers stuck, like those this morning, for hours. The media doesn't treat accidents on the highway as part of a connected story of problems because there is no connection among the motor vehicle operators involved in the crashes ...

A multi-vehicle accident on the Expressway south of Neponset around 7:40 this morning left several people injured, an 18-wheeler turned over, gravel all over the place and the entire southbound side and the northbound HOV lane shut.

Sarah reports a misstep on the stairs at Club Cafe in the South End sent her straight to the Quincy Hospital ER (well as straight as one can get what with detours all over I-93 and sidestreets) with what turned out to be two broken bones in her foot:

Doctor: I am giving you a prescription of Vicodin

Jenny (friend who drove her): WOOOO!

Doctor: Uhh that's not generally the response we like to hear. ...