Granted, it is/was one of the most complex engineering projects ever undertaken, but having failures of this magnitude just astounds. If problems were identified 5 years ago, why weren’t they addressed then? Now there are not a few, but “hundreds” of leaks in the tunnel, such that the dewatering system engineered into the project cannot keep up.
Oversight/management at Bechtel or Modern Continental (perhaps both) has screwed up mightily, and I hope the Massachusetts taxpayers don’t get hosed over the remediation, which may take up to ten more years.
No corrupt official ever goes to jail in this state…that ended with Mayor Curley! The big dig was a disater in the making…the tunnel runs through filled land, which soaks up water like a sponge…and the fact is, the walls werenever properly grouted (this was known since 1998.)
There will be a big investigation plus noisey hearings…but in the end, the taxpayers will pay, and the politicians wll keep on stealing.
For you MA Dopers: anyone remembe the Boston Underground Parking Garage scandal of the 50’s50’s?It was built by a corrupt contractor, who paid bribes to virtually every politician in Boston…and when it started to leak (and collapse) in the 70’s, it cost MORE to fix than to build it!
One of my grandfather’s neighbors got a jail term out of this!
So MA taxpayers…tighten your belts and prepare to get screwed!
Interstate 93 was built going straight through Boston. To get through a city that was already a tight fit back when the work was done 40-50 years ago, the highways were elevated, with one direction stacked atop the other. This worked well, except that the roads soon became too narrow to handle the traffic loads, and it’s a bit tough to add a lane to a road fifty feet in the air.
The solution? Bury it all. Make a giant tunnel going under the city, and have I-93 go thataway. Of course, it’s almost as hard to add a lane to a tunnel that’s too narrow as it is an elevated highway.
But that’s not all! There was also a slight problem with Interstate 90 (the one running East-West all the way from Seattle). While it went in a straight line across the state heading right for Logan airport, it ended abruptly, about a mile (and a moderately sized stretch of harbor) short of what everyone thought should be its goal. Getting to the airport required a very awkward series of on- and off-ramps, usually resulting in awful snarl-ups and lost tourists.
The solution? Bury that too. Send I-90 through a third harbor tunnel (there are two other tunnels a little further north, which come out near I-93), where it can pop back up again right in front of Logan.
Now, this all sounds like pretty complicated work to me, but it doesn’t sound 20 years and $20 billion complicated.
You know, it’s funny – the thread title is very vague, and has little indication of what this thread is all about, and yet I knew immediately.
It’s the Massachusetts version of the Grand Canyon, only it’s taking longer. Big Huge Colossal Fucking waste of taxpayer money. It’s a big hole that we’re all throwing our money down. And if you think it’s just Massachusetts money, you’re wrong – there’s federal funding going down The Big Hole, too. Of course, it’s all for a good reason. It will relieve traffic snarls. Except, as experts predict, it won’t.
All of the early “ads” for this thing showed idyllic pictures of how downtown Boston will look after this thing was done. You know, no more elevated eyesores, parks running through where highways used to be, and so forth. Did any of that come to fruition? Are there pictures?
Not to mention, it’s a big hole that everyone in the state is throwing a lot of their money down. Including folks who go to Boston once a year, once a decade. While their bridges fall apart. Does Massachusetts exist outside the 495 belt?
Coincidentally, I happened to go through the Big Dig yesterday (which is funny because I drive to Boston less than once a year). I noticed that those “lovely” tiles inside the tunnel are already falling off. I can’t imagine how much it cost to tile the whole damn tunnel, and it’s already looking tacky.
My family and I just visited Boston for the first time (just a quickie, Oct. 10-11), and we liked it a lot, but BOY was driving around there expensive! I think we figured out we spent like $60 in car-related expenses (tolls and parking). $28 to park overnight at the hotel, $10 to park downtown the first night, $15 to park by the aquarium the next day, and about $8.00 in tolls for driving in from out of town and driving back and forth from the airport area. I like to think we did our little part to help defray the cost of the Big Dig.
I wonder how much of the overrun was due to the site being flooded for several weeks in 2001. I don’t think anyone knows the real monetary cost of that flood, the best they can do is estimate at least $41 million.
A common practice in starting a big government program is to lowball the cost estimates, get it far enough along that it can’t be stopped, and then adjust the budget to match reality. This has to be done in steps, of course.
Who among us truly believed in the 80’s that the entire thing could be done for $5B, anyway?
Actually, it’s harder and a lot more expensive to tunnel than to go up. Adding another lane will cost way more than extending a structure.
I dunno, that doesn’t sound way off to me. Tunneling is insanely expensive and requires a lot more engineering than structures do. You only do it when it’s a last resort which is what the Big Dig was, I guess.
But every huge, innovative engineering project is gonna have unexpected problems. It’s pure hubris to think you can control and anticipate every aspect. And, historically, engineers have underestimated the realities of natural forces like water. Sublight is in Japan where they have their own version of the Big Dig: the Kansai Airport built on ground filled in on the bay which is sinking much faster than the experts anticipated.
But, I’m not saying the Big Dig wasn’t mismanaged. For all I know, it may have been. (disclaimer: I work for a company associated with the Big Dig although I have no direct involvement or inside knowledge about the project) But, massive projects are always gonna be a lot more than originally planned, no matter what the experts say…
That reminds me, one tunnel had to be dug through soft soil which required them to essentially invent a new way to tunnel. They ended up circulating hundreds of gallons of supercooled saltwater through pipes embedded the soil, which caused the soil to freeze. They also had to ensure that nothing above ground was disturbed so the digging for that particular tunnel was done in such a way so that the tunnel boxes wouldn’t push the soil upwards when moved into place.
Part of that problem was a series of misleading soil samples in the Fort Point Channel area, Bechtel, that required a complete redesign of it, to a series of prefab tubes that had to be sunk onto pilings that kept them above the Red Line subway tunnel.
The main portion of the roadway required another novel technique, pioneered in Germany, to allow it to be built directly under the existing freeway without shutting it down. Slurry walls were poured alongside the Artery into trenches, temporary bracing was placed under the Artery, the main supports were removed, and the new tunnel was dug between the slurry walls. That got expensive just from relocating all the downtown utilities around it.
The best joke about it, and about Gov. Mike Dukakis: Former MA Speaker Billy Bulger said “If Mike wants to depress the Central Artery, all he has to do is talk to it.”
