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Boston's Big Dig Finally Open
techiemac writes "I just saw a news story on yahoo about Boston's Big Dig finally opening. The Big Dig is considered by many to be the largest modern urban construction project ever!"
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A wonderful example of your government at play...by the time it's done, it will be almost 7 years late, and 700% over budget. A woeful example of a make-work program gone wrong....
i live about an hour from boston, and i know the northbound lanes have been open for a while now. this means that the entire thing is open now.
The northbound lanes have been open for a while, but they do still need to tear down the elevated highway.
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the Dems in power in Boston (Massachusetts is a one-party state) were happy getting union favors
The Governor is a Republican so how come you right away blame the Dem's. Don't let the facts get in the way of your rant though.
The Big Dig still has another 18 months and projected 1 billion dollars to go. Today was just the opening on the southbound tunnel.
The tunnels did NOT cost 17 billion. There is a world reconized bridge next to the fleet center, many new buildings, subway lines and bus lines running because of this project. I know the budget seems to be absurd, but when looking at all they did you can see where some of the money went.
BEN
Amorello had nothing to do with the project, other than being the head of the MTA while it was being built. Fred Salvucci was the guy behind it, and Tip O'Neill was a the big supporter in congress.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Your comment indicates you know nothing about Massachusetts local politics. The governor for some strange reason has been Republican for the last decade, but that is merely an aberration: both houses of the legislature, both senators, and (all or most of) the representatives are Democrats. Seems pretty one-party to me.
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No, finally -closing-. It opened over a decade ago, and has been rolled out in several stages over the last several years. I hope I have the order right here:
It's grossly over budget(4x at least?), is the largest construction project in the world- and had some amazing tolerances. One of the tunnels passes within inches of the existing red line subway lines(South Station, the largest terminal in Boston, is right smack where 93 had to go). This accounts for the VERY(maximum permissable grade under fed law) steep decline southbound; they had to go over one thing, under another. The red line now 'rests' on a giant concrete wall that was set in-place.
Oh, and in order to do the connector for the mass pike, they had to FREEZE the ground. Yep. Freeze it- because it was so unstable. And they installed new sections in one tunnel by hydraulically jacking them through the ground. Wild stuff.
The Boston Pops were going to do a concert inside the 93 southbound lanes before the opening- partially sponsored by corporate donors. Except that the corporate donors didn't know their money would be used for it. Even when they agreed to -fully- sponsor it, the concert was still cancelled after massive criticism. When you go $8B+ over budget, you don't exactly pat yourself on the back too enthusiastically.
Everyone in Boston is mostly just happy that it's over. For the last decade, we've had all sorts of odd route closures, exits shut down/reopened, conditions placed on tunnel/bridge use...it's finally all over, and everyone can just get back to driving like psychos :-)
Please help metamoderate.
Sorry, you're right. My mistake: he was a representative, not a senator.
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Hahahahahahahahaha
... lol, it came in very late, and the high speed rail link on the English side (linking Folkestone to London) is still not complete!
... nope, it massively overrun the initial project costs, although not at the same scale as this Big Dig thing. I'm convinced that massive public construction projects are simply a money drain.
"on schedule"
"on cost"
Also, Brighton is around 30 miles to the West of where the tunnel emerges, so where you got that from I do not know!
Also it cost 7 or 8 lives, twice that of this Big Dig project.
Really, I wish whoever submitted this had done a little better job with the story, considering how big a project this was :-)
Please help metamoderate.
You have to find the fine print. Only two of the 4 lanes are open. The old road was 3 lanes, 93 south is currently down to 2 lanes. We should see the last two lanes in 2006.
Parts of the MBTA light rail, heavy rail, and commuter rail systems were upgraded or expanded as part of the mitigate package to offset increased pollution from autos on the central artery.
Of course everyone in the Boston area knows how well the Old Colony Restoration (especially the Greenbush line) was received...
Don't forget that the Dems have VETO-PROOF majorities in both houses. This makes the governor only symbolic when it comes to legislative issues, because the leaders of the house and senate get together on a porch, smoke a cigar, and decide on funding issues. The only reason that the commonwealth hasn't collapsed has been the fiscally conservative democrats have been holding the leadership positions...
:)
Your other point doesn't really emphasize the problem. Not only is the entire Mass congressional delegation democrats, the senators are Kennedy (liberal leader in the Senate), and Kerry (Presidential candidate). This really hurts the state, as the GOP in Congress is more than happy to let us mire in our own stew...
Voting against Kerry in '02 was satisfying, even if it was throwing a vote away on the libertarians... not nearly as satisfying as voting for Bush in Fla. in '00...
Alex
For the DNC convention, right? It seems that the SS/DOJ/whatever has a problem with it being a couple hundred feet away from the convention site (Fleet Center). Terrorism yada, yada, yada. On the bright side 128 should be able to handle the extra traffic in usual style (good time to start that new Harry Potter book).
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
$15 billion / 161 lane-miles / 5280 (feet/mile) * 15 feet (average car length) = $264,680
Links:
Big Dig Photos
Big Dig Operations Center
The History Channel on the Big Dig
Official Big Dig Site
The northbound side is already gone. Take a look.
Too bad it's about New Jersey...
BigDig.com isn't. I can't believe no one's mentioned it yet. It's got loads of info; the maps and videos (including virtual fly-overs and fly-throughs) being the most instantly gratifying.
15 Billion for a tunnel. Drive in. Stop the car, draw a chalk line arround the car. The cost of that space is more than you will make in your life. Probably more than all your close friends will make in there ENTIRE lives. Someone made a killing!
What does that tell you? YOU'RE POOR! The economy doesn't operate on thousands of dollars.
Anyway, to play numbers...
7.8 miles of highway in all.
Lets underestimate (favor for you) at 4 lanes (2 each way) with each lane being 12 feet wide (average).
5280 feet in a mile.
Total area = 7.8*5280*4*12 = 1976832 square feet.
15 billion / 1976832 square feet = $7587.90 per square foot of highway.
Now lets say you drive a Windstar to get your kids to soccer practice (big car... in your favor again). If you draw a line around your car you get an area about (200.9in x 76.6in) 106 square feet.
106 x $7,587.90 = $804,317.40 (+ or - $10,000 I guess)
Lets say the average income is 30k per year (under-estimate concidering average in 1999 for asian-americans - to be PC - was above 51k)... I'm sure you'll work more than 26 years in your lifetime.
There are NO TOLLS in the Central Artery Tunnel. Let me repeat that, because I realize not all of you commute in and around the Boston area day in day out, THERE ARE NO TOLLS IN THE CENTRAL ARTERY TUNNEL.
There are tolls on numerous other bridges and routes, most of which either ALREADY HAD TOLLS or are replacing routes that were toll based to begin with. Tolls have GONE UP, but that's a different story.
This is incorrect. The I-93 section of the Artery is toll free.
I-90 (the Mass Pike) extension is toll, on the return (Westbound) side of the tunnel, comming out of the airport. It was previously $4 dollars for cars when I last working on the project. FWIW, the Eastbound section is toll too, but you pay them before you enter the section of the highway that belongs to the CA/T.
It costs more to drive on the NYS Thruway than it does for the MS Turnpike.
That is due in large part to geographic and climatic differences between MA and NY (even though they are adjacent).
NY state contains the snowiest place (Buffalo?) in the contiguous US, and the rest of it (apart from the coast) is quite bad too. In comparison to MA, it is low-populated and widely spread out.
The additional taxes NY residents pay go to snow removal on their roads and highways (and afterwards to snow-related repairs, which won't be completely until the next autumn). With (more snow) + (more distance) + (fewer taxpayers), it's easy to see why the state tax rate is so much higher than MA.
Do you have ANY CLUE what was involved in the Big Dig? Do you?
We are talking about 6 LAYERS of infrastructure.
Entire new methods of working the ground were needed to complete parts of this project. Ground Freezing for stabilization, tunnel jacking. You name it.
I tell you what bud. I would be willing to bet that a private firm would tell you today that it might cost you 5 Billion *just* to deal with the public utilities layer of this job. Have you ever been below ground in a service conduit?
Imagine one that is 100 years old. Parts of it running underwater. 100 year old plumbing that must be re-routed without disrupting service.
50 year old eletrical lines that the wiring maps were lost AGES ago. Wanna deal with that?
40 Year old telcom/data conduits, Some private. Most redundant and replaced years ago, but still physically down there. What goes where? Who owns what? What needs replaced? Whats new? Where do we PUT it? Is there more behind that wall?
Is that unlabelled black cable *laying* on the ground an old bell trunk line? Or UUnets OC-256. (I have no clue if UUnets pipe is that size, or where it runs, so don't flame me, I am just throwing out an example. A Large percentage of that service level is undocumented, so you have no clue) Lets cut it and find out? Wanna place a bet?
Okay. You have it all figured out now? Took you what? 1 year, 2 maybe to find out who owns what, where it goes, and to deal with city hall and the lawyers and the paperwork.
Congratulations, You have just completed 100 Feet of this layer of the project. Only 13 miles to go, and 5 other layers to deal with.
Learn what was involved before you bitch about the price. Sure it was expensive, but it was needed. And in the long run, it will be worth it.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
the actual residents would have benefitted a great deal more if the money were spent on improving the subways and light rail systems in the city.
The case for public transportation is fairly ugly. The cities that have the most people using public transporation are so crowded that driving a car and parking it is impossible or at the very least, very impractical. People love the privacy and freedom afforded by cars. Indeed, the best way of getting people to use public transport is to simply make it impossible for them to drive.
This means that massive funds should not be spent on these highways which are essentially a subsidy for the megacorporations that build the cars....Those who don't own cars should not have their tax dollars spent on such projects.
The Big Dig was financed by federal highway funds which was obtained through...federal gasoline taxes. Every state in the country funds its roads through:
a.) tolls
b.) state gasoline taxes
c.) driver and motor vehicle licensing fees
Roads are not financed through sales, property or income taxes. If you don't own a car, you're not paying for the roads...drivers are actually paying for the roads. Furthermore, the beauty of the gasoline tax is...if you use the road more, you pay more tax. The heavier your car is, the more it chews up the road, the more gas tax you pay. If you're a farmer buying gas for your tractor, you don't pay gas tax since it's not being used on a road.
In many instances, drivers subsidize public transportation. The $7 toll on the Verrazano Narrows bridge into Brooklyn is not because it costs that much to maintain the bridge...the majority of that toll (as well as tolls on other MTA tunnels and bridges) is used to subsidize the public transport system.
Roads are actually more efficient; every mile of road can carry 30,000 cars per day, however every mile of light rail line can carry only 10,000 people per day.
Interestingly, at the turn of the century my hometown of Cleveland had more trolley lines than you can shake a stick at...all of them affordable and furthermore, all owned by a bunch of different companies in competition with each other. The construction of the lines was often funded by industries who needed to get labor from home to work. I actually am going to bring your anti-car maker rant into this and hypothesize that having the government take over public transporation was done so that it would be marginalized to allow the growth of the automobile culture.
Today the Cleveland regional transportation authority is violently expensive, and is spending large sums of money on lines and projects that benefit few. Rail lines costing hundreds of millions of dollars have been built with the best justification being that they will be heavily used during home games of the Browns (6 times a year.) Often public transportation systems refuse to collect the data showing that the lines/bus routes are financially absurd, in order to hide these issues. Here in Columbus, there was a group fighting a public transport tax that showed that several bus routes had so few people that it was cheaper to buy each rider a new Ford Explorer than to continue running the route.
That may not apply to Boston, since it's still very densely populated and has some complex geography.
Discovery Channel has visited the Dig in Extreme Engineering series. There's lots of stuff to explore online too.
Roads are actually more efficient; every mile of road can carry 30,000 cars per day, however every mile of light rail line can carry only 10,000 people per day.
Clearly you haven't spent enough time in places like New York City, or London. The amount of traffic on the Metro Infrastructure is far greater than what the roads and highways carry.
Think about it, your average 11 car train (NYC) carrys about 1000 people. Keeping that in mind, and how there is a new train every 5 to 7 minutes means that there is anywhere from 12,000 to 5,400 thousand people, per hour, per train line, and per direction
Add in all the other major train lines, Long Island RailRoad, and Metro North, you can easily see how the entire system carries millions of people per day easily.
Sunny Dubey
Boston is unique compared to every other large American city. First off, Boston is right on the coast, so it simply can not be approached from the east (except by boat, of course). Unfortunately, their airport is in EAST Boston, across the harbor from downtown. This means that basically three highways bring all the major traffic into and through Boston. It also meant that primary access to Logan Airport (one of the world's top 10 busiest) was through 2 two lane tunnels under Boston harbor, one in each direction. Since it's not possible to complete the interstate highway 'ring' that encircles most large cities, effectively shunting a lot of traffic around them, all traffic must come through downtown Boston. The two main highways (Interstate 93, which runs N-S and Interstate 90, which runs West) literally meet right at downtown. Their connection was two lanes wide in each direction. Try to imagine what putting over 100,000 cars a day on two lanes looks like (for comparison, the four lane I-405 ringing Los Angeles carries about 80,000 cars a day and traffic jams on it can go for 15-20 miles). Some have been using the public transportation mantra. Fact is, back in the 70's and 80's, Boston spent billions on improving public transit, forgoing interstate highways in the process. Boston's subway and commuter rail system not only carries hundreds of thousands of workers every day, it does so in safe, clean, graffiti-less trains. The MBTA system has a customer approval rating approaching 95%! Problem is, traffic must also travel THROUGH Boston, which means that even if 100% of commuters took the train, there'd still be plenty of traffic downtown! Finally, unlike any other major city, Boston is made up of many neighborhoods, tied together by small, winding streets. The surface street system that serves so many other cities (such as Los Angeles) well, simply does not exist in Boston. A city the size of Boston simply NEEDED the Big Dig for its very survival.
I took a walking tour of the Zakim Bridge about a year ago, a few months before northbound traffic started using it, and I got a chance to ask the bridge project's chief engineer exactly that question. Apparently, I wasn't the first one to ask him that.
His first response was that the bridge was designed as a federal interstate roadway, and federal guidelines for such roads explicitly forbid any kind of pedestrian or non-motored traffic. Yes there seem to be exceptions, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, but apparently the feds don't like granting exceptions in most cases.
The second reason was an engineering problem. It's been a while and I forget the details of what he said, but basically it comes down to the fact that vehicles & pedestrians place different kinds of stress on a structure, and that in fact pedestrians bring a much greater load than vechicles do. Why? Because cars have their mass distributed more or less evenly across four pads placed very close to the corners of that overall mass; humans, on the other hand, have all of their mass bearing down on just two points, and those two points are directly underneath that mass. Moreover, people tend to move in groups, so you could end up with 20 people standing on the same surface area that one car takes up, and placing many times more stress on that area.
In other words, the bridge would have had to be completely redesigned to support any kind of pedestrian traffic. As it is now, the bridge appears from a distance to be a kind of delicate web of cables & roadway, and it seems like it should have been easy to cantilever a pedestrian lane off to the west side of the bridge (the side away from the harbor, facing towards the Museum of Science and the Charles River Basin). In reality, adding that pedestrian lane would have involved adding massive reinforcements to the support structure of the bridge, and the whole thing would have looked a lot less "delicate" than it does today. It wouldn't, in short, have been the same bridge.
The federal guidelines only made the problem more annoying, but they weren't the main reason so much as the straw that broke the idea's back. It would have been more complex, more expensive, less aesthetically appealing, and even then it might not have been able to get federal approval. As a result, they ditched the idea early on.
But yeah, it would have been nice -- from where I live in Somerville, a bike ride over the bridge into downtown Boston would definitely be the shortest & prettiest way to go. Oh well...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Actually Japan didn't declare war on Australia (or any other part of the British commonwealth/empire) until the day after Pearl Harbor. The whole point of Pearl Harbor was to prevent our Pacific fleet from interfering with the conquest of the resource-rich areas of southeast Asia, the Philippines, etc.
After they completed these conquests (with surprising ease) the Japanese leadership could not decide where to go next. They eventually decided to invade Port Moresby. Had they been successful (the US Navy turned back the invasion force at the Battle of the Coral Sea -- the first Aircraft Carrier vs Aircraft Carrier battle) it would have been a dagger pointed straight at Australia. With the failure of the invasion attempt however the threat to Australia was negated.
The Battle of Coral Sea was technically a tactical draw or defeat for the Allies (we lost more ships and aircraft -- both of which were in short supply at this stage of the war) but it was a strategic victory in the end. Perhaps more importantly it took two Japanese fleet carriers out of the picture for the coming Battle of Midway -- which would become the turning point of the war in the Pacific.
The Japanese did bomb Darwin several times during the war. It's debatable however that they ever had any intent of invading -- and it was a moot point after we defeated them in the Coral Sea.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.