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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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So... did they have a lottery on who the first person through was?
Was there a line of people/cars?
14.6 billion for a tunnel. Someone from that project needs to talk to Sprint and let them know the ins and outs about them building their tunnel from India to Overland Park, KS.
...but the Southbound lanes are open. Now all they need is the Northbound lanes, removal of the elevated interstate, grass planted, etc. But they're getting close to being done.
For such a large and complicated project with many engineering challenges, only 4 workers died during construction. That's a testament to everyone involved with the project, especially the workers themselves. Kudo to them.
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
i guess this means they're gonna tear down the elevated expressway (the road we used to use before the big dig). it's too bad too. as ugly as the road was, it was a pretty scenic route. you could see large parts of boston. i remember being scared shitless the first time i went on the upper deck, when i was a little kid; it's fairly high up.
i'll miss the old gal.
While building this tunnel makes life convenient for the suburb-dwellers all around Boston, 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. Cars are expensive for private citizens to own and operate; we'd move a great deal closer to an equitable society by making them optional instead of essentially a requirement of citizenship.
This means that massive funds should not be spent on these highways which are essentially a subsidy for the megacorporations that build the cars. (It makes their products more useful, and ties up the money that could be spent on other transport options, forcing people to purchase cars if they want any mobility at all.) GM, Ford, Toyota, etc. should be the ones building the roads, out of their own pockets, to create incentives for people to buy their automobile products. Those who don't own cars should not have their tax dollars spent on such projects. Those who use cars, and thus cost everyone a great deal in externalities like pollution, pedestrian deaths, loss of usable urban real estate, should pay the entire cost of their choices, rather than foisting it on society.
The Green Line subway in Boston should have been upgraded to an underground heavy rail line at least out past Boston University. The "Silver Line" circumferential route should have been built as a high capacity light rail route. The North-South rail link should have been implemented. Etc, etc.
You guys are all for throwing billions of dollars at a public works project, as long as union labor is involved, but anything Bush does is automatically about oil. nice job, jackass. If it's about oil, why didn't we keep kuait in the 90's?
The Chunnel, or the 32 mile undersea tunnel across the English channel connecting Calais, France and Brighton, UK, is the largest and greatest urban construction project ever. It cost the same -- roughly $15 billion -- but actually came in on schedule and cost, does wonders for the economies of both countries, and relies on clean mass transit systems that travel 200mph, run by open source software.
All of this was done with 13,000 engineers who spoke different languages. It was also voted the best project of the 20th century:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/302345.stm
Currently marked as 'Redundant'. Frankly, the project itself should be marked as redundant. I like Boston but this was absolutely ludicrous.
PBS ran a show on it not too long ago (a fluff piece, but I usually like 'em just the same). It was the first documentary I watched where I didn't come out in favor of the people interviewed. It was simply pathetic how people, who damn well knew they were pushing an overpriced project through, cared more about their own personal achievement than how tax dollars were being used. It's not like this doesn't happen all the time, but I was truly amazed at the sheer arrogance. It's useful from an engineering perspective, but man......what a lemon for the rest of the US.
I drove into Boston during much of this project, and can testify that succeeded in accommodating existing traffic without much interruption. The rest of the time, I used mass transit and was able to observe some of the work from sidewalks and subway stations.
Yes, there were cost overruns, but I'm not terribly surprised by the escalations (especially aftet accounting for inflation over 15+ years). And I don't expect to live to see a software project run any better (and I've been observing those for even longer).
I want a system whereby independant citizens can sue States to force them to pick up the entire tab for pork barrel projects their Representives and Senators secure for them. The factors to be directly considered would be the contents and primary purpose of the bill the appropriation was located in, the ammount and quality of debate over the appropriation, and does the appropriation benifit citizens not in the state enough to justify the cost. Leaving sole direct control of appropriations to elected officials is a big mistake.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
Twisting Skyscraper to Replace NY's WTC
"The entire project, with a memorial to the 2,752 victims at its center, was estimated to cost up to $12 billion over the next decade, officials said. It also includes six other office buildings and a transportation hub to be designed by renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava."
I bet this will wind up costing $50-100 billion, if not more, before it is over, and all sorts of false "patriotism" and "sending a message" and "empathy" will be used to hide blatant corruption and favoritism. I find this whole sham "memorial" project to be thoroughly disgusting.
Here is the start of the corruption and favoritism - The Port Authority will occupy 1/3 of the building!
WTC Tower Design Unveiled
WTF! why does some government bureacracy rate the most expensive and fancy location in NYC?
If anyone said it would cost over $10B when they started, they never would have started ...
If no one has the guts to tell the truth and then justify a project it should not be started!
This is why virtually all projects of any size fail when viewed in the light of reasonable planning, engineering, and auditing standards. (Or the more informal: Fast, Good, Cheap - pick two.)
Because they are based on known false assumptions and lies. Believe nothing anyone in power says about cost and scope.
Now you want to talk about wastes of money. Philadelphia just built 2 new stadiums for about 1.2 billion dollars. I wouldn't mind, save they the schools are chronically short funded, the new stadiums have half the seats of the old stadium, and nosebleeds cost $60. No one around here can afford that on a regular basis.
Bitch all you want about Boston wasting your money. You got infrastructure out of the deal. All we got was a stay of execution until the next time our sports teams want to play hardball. Damn it, and we had just paid off Veteren's Stadium...
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
But I thought you were implying wasting money was a bad thing? Why would we want all that useless crap?
Sorry, that guy way underestimated:
$4 billion for aircraft carrier
$2 billion for a sub
$2 billion for a B2 bomber
So, it looks like the BigDig project could have bought more than an aircraft carrier, a sub, and a B2.
So put a full compliment of aircraft on that carrier, and might as well fill up that sub with warheads. Then we'll call it even.
There are no costs when it comes to freedom.
One of the fundamental tenets of this country at it's founding was that it is a confederation of states. State government should always by default have higher powers over federal government, except in specific areas defined in the constitution.
It's really pitiful when someone such as yourself calls for 'national pride' as if it means 'rah rah big Federal government.' It doesn't and that isn't what America is about.
A Good Intro to NetBS
The Dallas High-5 project (huge 5 level interchange between I-635 and US 75) is the largest interchange ever built in Texas. It's currently running several months ahead of schedule and under budget (http://www.dallashighfive.org/progress/).
Granted, it's not anywhere near the scale, but it is an example of how a public works project can be well managed. The contract calls for fixed bonus amounts to be paid to the contractor for every day early the project is completed. It also imposes cash penalties for closing lanes of traffic during rush hour and for each day late the project is completed.
Ranger96
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.-Ecclesiastes 1:9
Ok, I drive in and out of Boston all the time. Honestly the construction is the biggest government tax scam. There is no difference now, and there won't be any difference 5 years from now.
The congestion is not "getting to the city". Is people circling boston streets endless with no parking. The big dig should have spent their money building 5 or 6 gigantic parking lot. That would have made more sense.
If this city would be willing to get rid of some cow paths, we would have enough room to build anything in no time. But no... we keep everything from the 1900s. No wonder the red sox can't win. The players are all tired by the time they get to fenway.
No. The keep adding & adding to the same limited project so the project grows to a 16 Billion monster is bogus.
That's fine. With that, I even agree.
I think there are a lot of fair targets at which to point fingers here. One is, as you suggest above, the way in which the project as a whole became what it did. If in the 80's someone had put the Big Dig (in its current scope) in front of me and made the case for it, I'm sure I would have supported it at some figure (but probably not $16B); I think a strong case can be made for it. But the way in which it developed from its original, much more modest origins, in such a fashion as to make saying "no, that's it" difficult each time, was just wrong.
Then, there's those responsible for the project's duration stretching out so far: from those who kept goosing the scope of the project larger, as above, to those agencies who committed to funding levels in a given year only to not actually provide them, to those responsible for the project management, to the unions who obtained job security for members in the length of the project.
And then, of course, massive corruption in the project management itself (James Kerasiotes, where are you now?).
And all of this, unfortunately but understandably, causes people to forget the good the project does. I've lived for extended periods in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Louisville, Seattle, SF/Oakland, and Washington, D.C., and I've never seen any stretch of highway as awful in its realization as I-93 through Boston, or any inner city as mucked up by a highway running through it.
What`s even more sad about this is that a large (perhaps the largest) part of the $15 billion that went into this project came from the pockets of citizens who are never going to use the tunnel. The part of the state that doesn't live in Boston has been financing this whole thing for I can't even tell you how many years, and we're never going to see any payoff for it. This was a largely tax-payer funded project, and the majourity of us taxpayers don't live in Boston. While the money was flowing in to make Boston-area commuters' lives a little easier, Western Mass public schools have fallen apart (class sizes at my former high school have doubled in 3 years to an average of over 40 students per class), city and state services are being cut back further and further (public works projects have all but ceased, near as I can tell), and OUR roads are falling apart because there isn't any money left to fix them with.
I'm all in favour of Big Projects and Big Engineering, but at some point you have to question why you're doing it. There's just no reason why the Big Dig had to be so expensive, or so big. I keep asking myself, "where's the beef?" ("where are the WMD's?"). Why did the State drag us into a project that benefits the few at the expense of the many? And (worse), how did we (the many) let them get away with it for so long?
-Another Disgruntled Mass-hole
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
I watched a documentary on the Big Dig a couple of weeks ago on Discovery channel's "Extreme Engineering" series.. it was quite interesting.
I just have one thing to say. Fuck you! Massachusetts is one of the small handfull of states that pays more taxes to the Federal Gov then is recieved in pork back. This includes the cost of the Big Dig.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Philly... Don't forget about The Disney Hole.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
"A woeful example of a make-work program gone wrong...."
The cost and time overruns were indeed stupefying (though I'd put at least half of each down to over optomistic estimation, as opposed to waste/corruption/unforseen complexities). But by calling it a "make-work" project, you make one thing abundantly clear: you never drove Bostons central artery on a regular basis. The big dig was sorely needed. It was truly visonary of it's originators that they realized the only solution was to completely redesign how traffic should move through that corridor. My only complaint with the design is that they didn't include a rail link between North and South Station. (Which of course would have added some additional huge amount to the tab). Anyhow, make-work it was not; Boston was stangling under the inability of traffic to move through that corridor. At thanksgiving time, I drove from the south to the airport in the middle of the day without slowing to under 30mph, much less spending an hour trying to go the last few miles. An unheard of feat in my previous 20 years of living near or visiting Boston.
They had cost overruns of $6bn, due to installing communication lines? That sounds absolutely insane.
What's wrong with just installing ducting for the cables, and then pull them through when needed, like they do elsewhere?
/Styx
While the BigDig itself is quite a feat in every regard (engineering, technological, political, etc.)
I personally, worked on the software driving the BigDig's traffic managment system (TMS). The completed system is a quite a feat, allowing their operators to monitor every asepect of the roadway.
The system features a complete CCTV network, espousing the entire system. It provides comprehensive monitoring and control of every device attached to the tunnel and supporting buildings, including traffic signs, message signs, fire alarms, smoke detectors, ventilation fans, electrical subsystems.
You name it, its connected to the TMS -- everything can be monitored and controled from there. Obviously, its not the only manner to control; everything has a redundant control system, so everything could be controlled if the system shuts down.
The system also features intelligent accident management and response: it can automatically balance responses to mulitiple accidents, and automatically recommend responses based on roadway conditions. For example, if a accidnet occurs shutting down the two center lanes, it will automatically PLace red X's on the lane signals, display accident warning messages on the signs, and even change the radio message as appropate. All the operator has to do is review the recommend actions, remove any he doesn't want, and activate. The software takes care of handling everything else.
Still, by your numbers, he's within an order of magnitude of being right. And if you consider that some sections of the construction cost much more than other sections, he may be completely correct for those areas. Fortunately, the tunnel isn't a parking lot (yet), otherwise he'd have a point.
None of these projects were actually built, and for most of them, there were no current plans to actually start construction.
Then I see the show on the Big Dig, and I begin to realize...
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Wow! It's not well known history, but North and South Station have never been really connected. There was a "short haul" line to service factories and the like, but ventilation problems back when locomotives were coal fired prevented all but that sort of light traffic from using it.
That link was shut down in 1911 or so as I remember, and the last time I checked moving rail cars from north to south requires running them right through MIT and ~ 12 miles out to Framingham and then back. For cargo, this will probably remain the case (cargo and passenger trains have different requirements based on cargo weight and passenger speed).
It's going to be great for the areas north of Boston if they pull it off (especially with airline trips getting ever more obnoxious). The Boston area has a great commuter rail system (as of a dozen years ago), but the difficulty connecting from North to South Station (you would have to get off a commuter train, get on the Green line, then transfer to the Red to get to South Station and its set of commuter lines) is a severe problem. And if Amtrack can extend service up north....
I agree entirely. The Big Dig is so freakin off topic it is insane, while my submissions about the open source Free Arms Project get nixed and my scoop about SpaceShipOne and Paul got rejected, so one of his buddies could get the scoop credit.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves