He says "overpass", I say ...

[Victor Steinbok]

  True, but "low underpass" is confusing, if it makes any sense at all.
Yet "low overpass" means something other than what it is used for here,
so it's not much of an improvement.

Storrow Drive is notorious for low clearance of its many underpasses,
routinely snagging moving vans coming in to drop off incoming students.
However, the logical implication here would be of a depressed roadbed in
an underpass, not of the vertical clearance of the passage. I am not
entirely sure how I would express it in a short phrase, but "low
overpass" ain't it.

     VS-)

On 7/12/2010 11:41 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> John M Guilfoil and Sean Teehan, describing heavy rain Saturday that
> caused flash floods in the Boston area, write:
>
> "As rain fell, areas like Storrow Drive and low overpasses in Boston,
> Cambridge, and Somerville turned into dangerous makeshift rivers; and
> drivers were not ready."
>
> Boston Globe, Sunday July 11, page B7.  Same still on the web site
> (boston.com).
>
> I too would have been unready at the overpasses.  And just think how
> submerged the underpasses would have been!  (Storrow Drive is
> notorious for the latter at least.)
>
> Joel

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