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Dorchester Avenue shut after gasoline tanker hits light pole, springs leak

Leaky truck. Photo by BFD.Leaky truck. Photo by BFD.

Updated Friday morning.

Crews worked through the night to contain and clean up a gasoline spill from a tanker truck whose driver managed to bust open valves on its side, sending more than 1,000 gallons of gas into the street and Dorchester Bay, shutting Dorchester Avenue at Freeport and Hancock and forcing the evacuation of 44 nearby residents.

The Boston Fire Department reports the roads were re-opened around 6:10 a.m., after the remaining 10,000 gallons of gasoline were pumped into another tanker, foam and gasoline-absorbing materials cleaned up and the tanker towed away.

The department says the truck, making a delivery to the Sunoco station, ran over the base of a light pole around 11:15 p.m., rupturing the valves for one of its two tanks.

The department declared a Level 3 hazmat response - its highest - as police blocked roads and called in two MBTA buses and the Red Cross for residents forced to evacuate their homes on the even-numbered side of Dorchester Avenue.

The Coast Guard was summoned because the gasoline was flowing into a basin leading right into Dorchester Bay.

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Comments

I drove through there about an hour ago and it seems to be back to normal, traffic-wise, although there are still a lot of emergency personnel on-site.

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This crash, fuel leak, environmental disaster, and near fire catastrophe was created by new "complete street" design practices where turns are greatly tightened so that vehicles must slow down greatly and waste fuel, creating more green house gas. Unfortunately, these turns are too tight for tanker trucks, such that they either need to cut corners or drive into opposing traffic lanes.

This time, over a 1,000 gallons of fuel leaked. Last time, in December, a cyclist was killed at Vassar and Mass Ave in Cambridge following that corner radius reduction about 2005.

Its long overdue that road designers halt this money wasting road reconfiguration that hurts people and the environment. There are no proven benefits from it, just speculated ones, and real costs in lives and property loss.

One can tell when a money wasting redesign has been done. Bike lanes added, mobility reduced, landscaping added, $4,000 sidewalk lights added, patterned sidewalk edges, roadway narrowing.

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If people drive irresponsibly, we must design roads irresponsibly to accommodate them?

Those squishy things that perambulate off to the side? They're unimportant.

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There will always be accidents. We create roads to enhance mobility beyond, say, dirt paths. Flawed changes made in 2010 almost made crispy those squishy things, not an improvement. Real dangers for truck traffic and added green house gas production have shown no actual reduction in accident or death studies. The expensive road features are all for show, in particular bump outs and bike lanes. Central Square is #1 in bike accidents and #2 in pedestrian accidents statewide since travel was replaced with sidewalk and bike lanes. Bad "complete" road design is spreading like a cancer increasing costs with little benefit to taxpayers. Benefit mostly goes to condo developers following landscaping and gentrification. Low income people suffer higher rents and have to move out so more yuppies can enjoy new condos with granite kitchen counter tops.

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Those idiot pedestrians and bicyclists were asking for it. They should have encased themselves in two tons of armor and driven like REAL AMERICANS. If a truck driver speeds irresponsibly and hits them, then at least they are protected!

Only one kind of mobility matters: motorized!

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There are no proven benefits from it, just speculated ones, and real costs in lives and property loss.

Care to back that up with some actual statistics and research?

I'm sure, after all, that there isn't any research done on street design that designers use to, you know, design streets?

They just do it to kill people and piss you off, personally.

Right.

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Studies that won't show desired outcomes are not funded or not performed. Its like a drug company not wanting to publish results that a drug is no better than a placebo. Thus there aren't studies showing the money is wasted, just none showing any effectiveness!

Here is a funding offer since 2005 to show that pedestrian treatments like curb extensions are effective. No results published.
http://rip.trb.org/browse/dproject.asp?n=10996
Transportation Research Board (of National Academy of Sciences) T-2695-94

I welcome anyone to show studies the features (cost) effective. The best that bump outs have shown is that a pedestrian standing out 6' from the curb is more likely to have cars stop for them to cross. Duh. We can do that being protected by parked cars without a bump out.

Bike lanes vs wide curb lanes have no safety difference. The big difference is that riding a bike on sidewalks is 5x as dangerous as the road. Studies of hospital ERs show car-bike crashes only 25% of bike accidents, and bike riding is the leading cause of head injuries.

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"The best that bump outs have shown is that a pedestrian standing out 6' from the curb is more likely to have cars stop for them to cross."

Yes. I think that's the whole point; getting cars to stop for pedestrians.

"We can do that being protected by parked cars without a bump out."

Really? Because when I'm driving it's a whole lot hard to see a pedestrian behind a parked car than it on a bump-out. In fact, pedestrians emerging from behind parked cars are frightening, because you can't see them before the are actually in your line of travel.

This was some bad truck driving here. No two ways about it.

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The point about bump outs is that they cost money, mostly from needing storm drains on both sides, and show no benefit. The one study is an apples vs oranges study. 6' into the road vs curb line. The same way a cyclist being assertive and taking the lane is how pedestrians get cars or cabs to stop, standing out into the street a little. Nobody will fund a study to show a negative result that their policy is a waste of money. Nobody funds studies to show the green house gas increases or MPG decline from traffic calming devices - they don't want information available opposing their policies.

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"here's a funding offer". Um, yeah. So. RFPs stay up all the time - doesn't mean there are "no results published".

Lets see some evidence to back your claims - not poorly conducted naive google searches, truthy assertions, and conspiracy theories.

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