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!"

Comments

Re:It's not done...

[puppet10]

The northbound lanes have been open for a while, but they do still need to tear down the elevated highway.

18 months to go

[saabmp3]

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

Re:Most Expensive For Sure

[ShadowBlasko]

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.