The BCC reports on a major double-parking problem:
Residents of the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) are wondering how long it will take to remove a disused Boeing 737 that has been abandoned in a busy road.
The decommissioned aircraft was being driven through the city at the weekend when the driver got lost and then abandoned the plane.
And I used to complain about boat trailers blocking my driveway.
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4 comments
They need to hire the San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic to handle this situation. A MTA meter maid will be putting a ticket on your windshield within 10 seconds of the meter expiring, and if you’re parked on the street and blocking someone’s driveway by even 1 inch (even if it’s your own driveway) a MTA tow truck will haul your car to the municipal carpound so fast that your head will spin. Although I suspect that even the MTA would be a bit stumped by a 737 blocking someone’s driveway…
– Badtux the Helpful Traffic Penguin
They need a Uke, one of the tractors use to position aircraft, and a veteran driver, because they are going to have to push the sucker backwards on the trailer until they can get it on a road that will allow passage.
I have a hard time believing they routed it through a city.
My co-worker in the next cubicle is from India, and he laughed and laughed. He had no problem believing it at all. Nobody regulates anything in India. They have all the “right” laws on the books, but you can pretty much do anything you want and if you get caught, just pay a bribe to the right government officials to keep doing it. Hmm, sounds like Florida, eh?
As for routing through cities, India doesn’t have modern freeways that circumnavigate the cities like the United States has. If you want to get from one place to the next, you end up going through towns and cities.
Well, down here we call it a “special use permit” not a bribe, but roads get closed all the time for moving things that require the entire width of the road, like houses. There was a big stink when the Air Force built a pedestrian bridge across US-98 because it cut down on the size of things that could be moved. Given that the bridge is on Hurlburt Field, and the local officials in cohoots with our congresscritter routed the road through the base, there wasn’t much they could do. The problem is the bridge was constructed to permit all “legal” loads and vehicles to pass, so the value of “special permits” plummeted.