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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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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 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
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.
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.
Links:
Big Dig Photos
Big Dig Operations Center
The History Channel on the Big Dig
Official Big Dig Site
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
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.