I remember back at the dawn of time, maybe 1993, driving into Boston for a conference being sponsored by the Massachusetts Municipal Association. Don’t ask me what it was all about. I was on the city council, and Mary Ford had just been elected Mayor. She was really excited at the changes she was going to make. Going under the truck-eating railroad bridge, she pointed up at the battered and twisted ironwork and said, as I remember, “If I become Mayor, there’ll never be another truck stuck under than damn bridge.”
“We’ll put up warning cables like they have on Storrow Drive.” Two hours later, when we got to Boston, we got onto Storrow Drive: a car-only parkway that parallels Charles River.
“There they are!” she pointed up at the overhead steelwork with the network of dangling cables that create a harmless racket if a U-Haul truck should forget and head for the tunnel under the Feidler bandstand and park.
And now, fifteen or sixteen years later, and trucks continue to get stuck under our railroad bridges. Mary Ford has come and gone, and we’ve had two or three terms of Mary Clare Higgins. Tired-out Canadian truckers don’t see the signs and blunder into danger: big mobile homes come to a jarring halt on North Street and a police officer has to go down and stop traffic and let them back up. Ask about the problem up at DPW and police department, and you will be assured that nothing can be done. Warning devices mean liability of some sort.
But what we have done is to make accidents very expensive to the truckers and their insurance firms. The fine is $500 for hitting the bridge, and Harold’s Towing, I’m sure, earns big bucks for every time a truck gets wedged under the underpass. Northampton and its bridge, Goshen and its Route 9 speed trap, traps for the unwary.
I thought of this in relation to the still-evolving mess over the landfill. Once upon a time good Mayors wanted to shake up this town, but they have had to learn to live with diminished expectations. This won’t work, that won’t work. Our mayor has become the weary defender of the old boy network at the Department of Public Works and the police department. Somewhere tonight a Quebecois trucker is short of sleep and has lost his way. Watch out.
1 comments:
Mike Kirby relays a comment from someone who ran afoul of the Google system of screening comments (I will post on this) He is a retired long haul truck driver, who drives in and around Boston infrequently, and one day he approached one of the Boston tunnels (Callahan, I think). The clearances looked ok to him, but just before he emerged he sees a new sign. At the same time, there is a terrific blast of sound from klaxons and flashing red lights. He jams on the air brakes and comes to a halt,wondering what to do. A guy runs up in an uniform and helps him deal with the problem, how I forget) Geez he says thats great, do you do this often? Ten times a day, he said, and laughed. He says he doesn't understand Northampton and what kind of liability they are risking by installing warning devices
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