That truck was carrying structural steel; other semi trucks carry heavy construction equipment, precast concrete parts, etc. Coke doesn't need an 18-wheeler to deliver 12-packs, but an outright ban on 18-wheelers in Boston would be incredibly detrimental to getting anything built.
I agree that it would be detrimental politically to ban such trucks, the construction and trucking industries would raise a huge and probably successful stink. But it is feasible: the Japanese do it.
When I lived in Tokyo (three years in the 90s) not everything was built of concrete, there were plenty of steel frame high rises that I saw go up. And I am pretty sure they still build some high structures with steel frames. They have some spacious building sites out on those manmade islands in the bay, and use plenty large trucks to supply those. But they also infill lots of high rises in incredibly tight spaces in built-up areas with turning radius challenges that make Boston look like Houston.
Most steel frame buildings I see in the US have a grid pattern on approximate 12' by 12' grids. They obviously use metric in Japan but the grids were in that ballpark there, too. Sometimes here we'll see some of the members span two modules of such a grid, i.e., in the 24' range, and that demands a pretty long truck, clearly. But if the engineers are so directed, they can design a frame to keep all steel members down to one grid length (or height). In Japan, the engineers are thusly instructed, or else the materials could not be delivered at all, never mind what the traffic laws said about trucks.
In the US, even when a delivery of steel consists of 12 foot-ish members, you'll generally see several stacks loaded end to end on a long truck. From efficiency of fuel standpoint, makes sense. For bicycle and pedestrian safety, it is crazy. In Tokyo, those 12 foot-ish members would be on far shorter trucks. You'd be amazed at how heavy-duty some of those stubby little trucks were, they could really carry hefty burdens, but they were stubby short little things from a length perspective. Also, the side windows on those trucks are generally far bigger on each side of the cab, and extend down much lower, and the round convex mirrors are down way lower than on one of our big rigs. So the driver, who's not sitting as high to begin with, can look downwards across his cab thru a side window at a convex mirror that is at lower than face level of a person on a bike.
Tokyo commuters ride bicycles by the millions to work, so this issue is far more frequently pertinent there than it is here. They drive on the left side of the road there, so it's the "left hook" that is most dangerous. So they've equipped truck drivers with vastly better vehicles for seeing pedestrians or cyclers on the far side, and they're driving a way shorter length truck to begin with (most of them not trailer rigs but single chassis deals), so there's not such a "drag across" effect for them to manage as they make the left hook. They barely need to swing right at all before hooking left.
I lived there long enough to watch entire thirty story buildings go up, with steel frames, with never one long-body truck getting near the site. Even their cranes break down to smaller components.
I am not expecting us to become like Japan anytime soon (Oh how I wish we could be like Japan on passenger rail performance...). My point is that we could build as high as we want without bringing five axle tractor trailers into the city, if we wanted to.
We don't want to. As Matthew noted above, it is just amazing how much carnage we accept on our roads for the convenience of trucks especially, but cars too.
I agree that for the short term we need to go at it with regulations at the city level. Redesign intersections as much as possible, but also demand police details and special use permits for bringing longer rigs in and out. Push the pricing up, and they'll start looking at those smaller trucks, which can be found here. Waiting on the feds to fix this will be a long wait.
