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Just a little drain clog, MassDOT says of flooded Ted Williams Tunnel

By adamg on Fri, 12/13/2024 - 8:53am

WBZ reports.

Neighborhoods: 
Downtown
Topics: 
Driving
Free tagging: 
Ted Williams Tunnel
I-93


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Comments

By John Costello on Fri, 12/13/2024 - 9:05am.

Ha!

If you are stuck in traffic between the O'Neil and the Boston Food Bank, you can look down and every single one of the storm grates has a Home Depot garden store amount of dirt in them.

Mass DOT has their head right up their rears when it comes to things like this.

I mean it is not like their headquarters is close to Lake Williams or the Expressway or anything.

Poor form lads. Poor form.

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By BostonDog on Fri, 12/13/2024 - 9:25am.

MassDOT spends most of their time and budget on MBTA maintenance. Sometimes I wonder if they even remember not everyone takes the T.

/S

By Phillip Yardley on Fri, 12/13/2024 - 9:48am.

If you look at the storm drains on basically all the bridges crossing the Charles River, they're more or less permanently clogged. Never cleared. Some even have vegetation growing out of them. Lest we forget that clogged storm drains were one of the principal causes of that terrible bridge collapse in Pittsburgh, as salt-water runoff in the winter is then forced to drain down parts of the bridge it shouldn't.

It is truly baffling why these organizations cannot perform the simplest of maintenance tasks, and is a bit worrying because - what other, more complex maintenance tasks are they neglecting?

By SwirlyGrrl on Fri, 12/13/2024 - 10:16am.

In November of 2023 I found - and photographed - the Queen Mother of all potholes on the viaduct over I-93 carrying 28S to Roosevelt Circle in Medford.

I immediately reported it as an issue to DOT, with pictures and GPS coordinates. It was down to the decking/rebar underneath. Huge chunks of concrete just missing.

New Years Day, 2024. I take the same route and not only was it NOT repaired ... it was twice the length it had been. Longer than my bike. Full thickness with underwear showing. I'm amazed that it had not eaten a tire or two, but it was off to the side enough that I could get past it on my bike between the white line and sidewalk. It was pretty horrifyingly bad and waiting for salting and melt water to rot the exposed deck.

This time, I sent it to my son at DOT. Snow with a freeze-thaw cycle was in the 3-day forecast. My son showed his boss, who recoiled in horror and asked for an exact location. The response: "The last thing we need is another bridge problem at Roosevelt Circle!!!". Crews were immediately dispatched to patch it up.

So ... see something and say something to someone who can show and tell. Otherwise, it simply gets ignored until bad shit happens.

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By Neal on Fri, 12/13/2024 - 11:40am.

Full thickness with underwear showing.

I had no idea that bridges even wore underpants! Though I'm not sure I'd describe the Fellsway bridge over I-93 as thicc, but I guess that's subjective ;-)

By Frelmont on Fri, 12/13/2024 - 2:40pm.

And, the Mass Pike westbound in places a little east of Cambridge as of a month, or so ago when I last drove that stretch during a heavy rain. The entire right lane was flooded for tens of yards.

By Sock_Puppet on Fri, 12/13/2024 - 10:42am.

Even the source linked to says it's the Ted Williams

MassDOT is reassuring drivers that it was an isolated incident in a now-viral video that shows the floodwaters rising quickly inside the Ted Williams Tunnel in Boston as drivers carefully inched along during the evening commute.

By adamg on Fri, 12/13/2024 - 11:26am.

Thanks.