During the height of the Monday morning rush hour, two tractor trailers carrying cranes for the Faulkner Hospital expansion PARKED in and completely blocked one of only two inbound travel lanes for commuters going into Boston from the Parkway neighborhoods and southwest suburbs for nearly two hours.
These trucks were not unloading but were parked for hours at an already congested and dangerous intersection waiting to be waved on to the construction site hundreds of feet away.
This massive disruption was completely unnecessary as there was plenty of parking available on the road shoulder in front of the Faulkner Hospital just across the street - a large, long, mostly EMPTY lane many hundreds of feet long. This area is designed for a bus stop and exclusive right turn lane. The volume of traffic in that lane on that outbound side is exponentially lighter than the inbound side during the morning commute.
Traffic was needlessly backed up for nearly a mile inconveniencing thousands of drivers, causing chaos at the already dangerous Centre/Walter Street rotary and ironically delaying travel time for incoming ambulances.
Faulkner’s proposed expansion was controversial in part for the concerns over the previously existing, massive congestion and the obviously poor road infrastructure. They assured the public that they would be pro-active and manage this carefully.
Parking tractor trailers and blocking one of only two inbound travel lanes at the height of the morning commute with no police details does not come even close to what was promised, particularly when anyone on site can see that there is an easy solution across the street.
I am sure the truck drivers are doing as they are told, but there are many managers from both Faulkner Hospital and Turner Construction making six figure salaries who are supposed to be smart enough to both anticipate and figure this out and not massively inconvenience or endanger the public safety when an easy solution states them in the face.