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Truck turns sardine can on Memorial Drive

Sardine can truck

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").

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Comments

Driver looks pissed that you are taking his photo.

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The driver clearly used the Memorial Drive underpass when he was not supposed to. The damage is just too obvious.

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He's pointing westbound in front of MIT's Great Court, not yet having reached Mass. Ave. or the underpass below it. Is the Longfellow Bridge overpass on Mem Drive low enough to damage a truck like this?

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Looks like he's backing up after having smacked into Mass Ave. If you notice the signs that hang down saying "HEY STUPID IF YOU HIT THIS SIGN, YER GONNA HIT THE OVERPASS COMING UP!" is hanging straight down - meaning he's backing up to it. If he was going forward the sign would probably be swinging in the breeze behind him.

So this also explains why Captain Mensa was hanging out the window looking like he was giving the stinkeye to the roving Jimmy Olsen -- he was looking into his sideview mirror trying to back up Memorial Drive to the point where he could pull off to the right and onto Mass Ave. "The Best for Less" ...truck.

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The Mass Ave underpass is posted 9 feet clearance, and the Longfellow is 11 feet. There might be some leeway.

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It's the so-called professionals that are doing this. WTF?

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The word what it denotes. Had a nice view of the construction from the Pru the other day but not a camera that would take a decent picture. Thing's going to be awesome when restored. Amethyst tinted, I believe?

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That's what bicycling enthusiasts are writing. Who needs mattresses anyway? Ikea is on to something. Cities in northern Europe are hostile to trucks, so Ikea doesn't need those problems and doesn't deliver.

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Hitting overpasses isn't the reason, but we will start seeing fewer trucks like this in town, because lots of businesses around here are discovering (years after the Europeans) that vehicles like Sprinters, etc. are easier to handle, more efficient and more cost-effective to use in town.

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Once again Mark. I have to point out no biker is advocating the banning of trucks. If you going to be advocate for your (seems to be personal) cause, don't make up grievances to be outrage at.

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There is a constellation of advocacy groups which include cyclists, though mostly urban planners and the design firms that profit from them. The non-profit lobbies are named {livable | sustainable | complete} streets, "bikes belong", and anything to do with "smart growth". Road designs are increasingly made anti-truck with very narrow lanes, tight corners, and low clearances. I was wrong to single out bicyclists - they are a minority in the bandwagon. Most of the story is about real estate profits in the background with idealistic advocates on the face.

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And they generally make provisions for trucks and buses.

The point of those road designs is to stop lawbreakers like you from speeding on city streets and killing people.

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That was an impressive apology non-apology. You manage to pull back your statement on bikers by you are wrong to single bikers out, but replace that with bikers are a bunch of idealistic tools being manipulated by corporate interests.

That just even more insulting.

Again Mark, no biker advocates the banning of trucks and bikers are not idealistic tools being used as the face of corporate real estate lobbyist. Road designs you speak of are designed with calculation to traffic and usage. Also the low clearance you speak off, they have been there for decade (with one recent bridge was a reconstruction) - much belong to the time where design-thinking you probably see as ideal.

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Ahhh...the hand begins to tip. Anything to do with "smart growth" is part of the "constellation" of "lobbies" to make big profits for real estate interests. Things that are "livable," "sustainable" or "complete" are code words for things that limit freedom and provide profit to urban planners and design firms.

How long until we start hearing the theories that Agenda 21 is a U.N. plot to usurp freedom in the U.S., force us into hideous bike spandex and put us under the greasy thumb of shadowy, bad-tipping euro-technocrats with square frame glasses and fancy shoes?!?!?

GOD SAVE THE UNION!!!!

(Actually there is a plot out there to prevent complete economic and environmental collapse at the hands of short-sighted ignorant profit reaping economic system that in the name of continually increasing consumption causes one part of the world to live at a resource-consumption level that cannot be sustained without inevitable environmental devastation and world political domination/human rights abuse. Bad-tipping urban planners aren't necessarily part of it, but they do have a good handle on how to set up city infrastructure a bit more efficiently.)

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You have explained for me!

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I have a friend who owns a distribution business. I suspect that he runs the big rigs OUTSIDE of the older New England cities (including Boston, Providence, Springfield and Hartford) and sprinter vans inside the cities to supply hair salons and bodegas for reasons OTHER than he is a pitiful truck-hating brainwashed Northern European immigrant.

Something like "expensive" and "inefficient" to bring the big trucks into the city when diesel is pushing $4 a gallon? Maybe.

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Mattresses, not so much except for uncommonly tall vans. Even then, two problems remain: not enough space to hold a day's worth of bed and mattress deliveries; Difficult to load vans from warehouse loading docks.

How many mattress delivery trucks are vans? I've never seen one. That's because mattresses can fit standing up in a box truck. I doubt a king mattress or box spring will even fit in most vans. What may work for your hairdresser friends does not work for everything.

So, now that companies aren't going to replace their whole fleet of delivery vehicles, I suppose you want mattresses only delivered to customers from 10pm to 6am, and without waking up anybody else in the building.

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Here's a hint: transportation and human habitations are about people.

Not cars, not trucks, people. You are not your car.

Seriously. Hopeless.

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A high-roof Sprinter van will easily fit a load of queen-size mattresses and boxsprings. A king-size mattress could go in diagonally or curved a bit as they tend to do, and the split boxspring could go next to it:

http://www.freightlinersprinterusa.com/sprinter/ca...

You've seen beds get delivered, right? A huge truck shows up, usually late, saying they had one hell of a time finding a way into your neighborhood that didn't involve overpasses and narrow streets and "no trucks" signs. The truck parks wherever it can, blocking the street and annoying the whole neighborhood. Cops don't usually ticket them for violating parking laws, saying "they gotta make their delivery somehow." The truck is empty except for the one bed.

But this is more efficient than a van, right?

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Beds and mattresses come to the warehouse loading dock on tractor trailers. Are you now requiring companies to construct new loading ramps for a new fleet of vans? While fork lifts conveniently load and unload loading dock trucks, vans need much more manual loading, taking longer.

Perhaps you should just start your own freight delivery company smarty pants, putting all the stupid people using box trucks instead of google, out of business!

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People in Europe sleep on the floor?

Matress fit in minivan easy.

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Anybody in shipping knows that box trucks are dyeng out because they suck. People are just stuck with them because they can't sell them because not anybody wants them, and then get rid of them when they can.

If you need one, rent it for once. then you get the cheap vans for cheap. Yes, they take more people - but that's more jobs because paying people is cheper than waisting gas.

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Except when they are driven onto a road with low clearances, I suppose. Simple answer: don't do that.

It's the five-axle heavy trucks that cause the biggest problem with damage to the road. I believe the figure is approximately 3000 times as much damage to the road as a private car. The city, and the taxpayers, are the ones paying to repair that.

You don't need a five-axle truck to do mattress delivery, I assure you. I see lots of furniture delivery trucks around here, and they're invariably much smaller. Much like UPS and Fedex trucks. I bet those two companies know a thing or two about doing city deliveries.

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SwedenIceland
Norway

Well, here's the delivery policies for Sweden, Iceland, and Norway. Those are pretty northern Europe, I'd say. Nothing about not delivering to cities. Their limitations seem to be islands, mountains, and places without roads.

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