I-93

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. ...

Specialkvi made this Big Dig video mashup:

And let's not forget the old Central Artery.

Photo of an SUV flipped on its roof on I-93 south yesterday; nobody hurt.

Boston Police report that an alleged shoplifter at the Target at the South Bay mall caused a bit of a commotion on the neighboring Southeast Expressway around 2:30 p.m. yesterday:

As the officer continued to pursue the suspect, he fled across the parking lot, and then jumped the barriers alongside 93 South, and ran directly in the path of oncoming traffic causing numerous cars to swerve to avoid hitting him. The suspect then continued and jumped the barriers onto 93 North, avoiding being hit this time due to the fact that State Police had stopped traffic on the northbound side after being advised of the fleeing suspect on the highway.

They report eventually catching up with him back on the southbound side.

Also, yesterday, shortly after midnight, police report breaking up a large house party at 81 Prentiss St. in Roxbury. All the furniture in the joint had been cleared out to make room for DJ equipment, large amounts of alcohol and at least 70 partygoers, police say. Three arrests, including the people with the lease on the place, who now also face illegal weapons charges.

Casey Ross has the details on proposals to raise $20 billion over the next 20 years just to keep our existing roads, bridges, tunnels and public transit systems from falling apart even more. How about 5-cent/mile tolls on I-93, I-95, I-495, to start?

Globe: US sees flaw in Zakim Bridge.

Dan Kennedy: I assume - I hope - that the Globe is going to keep hammering away at this:

... No doubt [Transportation Secretary] Cohen and his boss, Gov. Deval Patrick, are freaking out at the prospect of another multizillion-dollar repair job. But people will have to understand that it wasn't the Patrick administration who oversaw this shoddy project, and that it's worth any price to prevent what happened in Minneapolis from happening here. ...

Sean Roche is getting annoyed that Turnpike tolls will be going up again to help pay for the Big Dig:

... Higher, peak-priced tolls on the 'Pike would be welcome (with standard caveats about managing the impact on the complex transportation infrastructure).

But, it's insane that I-93 remains a free ride, especially given that technology exists to charge vehicles without erecting a single tollbooth. ...

The state Attorney General's office reports that Powers Fasteners of Brewster, NY, has been indicted on one count of involuntary manslaughter in connection with Milena del Valle's death from falling tunnel ceiling panels last summer.

Powers made the glue that was supposed to help hold the 3,000-pound panels in place.

In a statement last month, the company said it was being scapegoated by investigators, because it only supplied $1,287 worth of glue for the $15-billion project and because it had no control whatsoever over how the glue was used, such as the decision to use what officials now say was the wrong kind of glue.

Albert Aubrey was arraigned today on charges he killed a friend by driving off an I-93 ramp in March.

Officials charge Aubrey, 20, of Manchester, NH, drove his car into Boston Sand & Gravel - 70 feet below. Aubrey survived, but passenger John "Jake" Anderson did not. The Suffolk County District Attorney's office says its evidence shows that Aubrey had been drinking heavily at a party before the crash and that friends tried to keep him from leaving:

... Andersen is believed to have accompanied him so he would not have to drive alone.

Prosecutors believe that Auprey drove his 1999 Toyota Camry north on Route 93 in the area of the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge. At about 4:30 [a.m.], the Camry went over an embankment on the Route 1 exit, falling 70 to 80 feet into the Boston Sand and Gravel lot below. The car came to rest in a pool of water and remained undetected until about 7:00 a.m., when Auprey called 911. ...

Giambino wonders:

Exactly when did it become acceptable to have children fund-raise by sending them with canisters into expressway off-ramps to essentially beg for money? I saw a pee-wee football league in my beloved Dorchester doing that today to raise money for uniforms or something. ...

Two more, in the same basic area on the Southeast Expressway as the one that got wedged in a bus yesterday; one driver lost control and slammed into a Jersey barrier.

Couple this with Josh Simons's HazMat game (identify hazardous cargos by the numbers on the placards on the back of the trucks) and you get a new way to spice up the commute: "Say, Bob, whadaya think would happen if a flying manhole cover sliced through that truck with the '3' hazardous placard?"

Earlier:
Oh, we thought we were just supposed to check manholes on 128.
Route of doom.

Manhole cover gets wedged under bus on Southeast Expressway.

Update:
Two more go flying.

Earlier:
Route of doom.

Two car accidents (one fatal) 25 miles apart were enough to create highway gridlock throughout the Boston area this afternoon.

Freewayjim presents: Big Dig Drive - the world's most expensive video game: