The Weekly Quill — A Detour with No Return
QI 2022 Midyear Private Capital Outlook
“The political controversy surrounding this Boston’s Big Dig could have the effect of throwing cold water on any plans for farsighted infrastructure development around the country.”
Andrew Natsios
In July 2006, the last cutoff cut off access to the freshly cut. Reopened on January 13, 2006, the detour redirecting traffic around the Albany Street off-ramp exit off Interstate 93 was removed. Along with restoring direct access to the Boston Flower Exchange, the notorious Big Dig had finally ended. In April 1987, the U.S. Congress approved federal funding to modernize the arteries in and out of downtown Boston.??
Opened in 1959, the Central Artery elevated highway initially carried 75,000 vehicles a day through the heart of Boston’s city center. That best laid plan never conceived volumes upwards of 200,000 vehicles by 1990. Traffic slowed to a crawl for a minimum of 10 hours a day. Tack on accidents, the occurrence rate of which was four times the national average, and a bad day for Mother Nature and time racked up behind the wheel was even more taxing, literally. The marginal annual cost of the congestion to motorists was estimated to be $500 million. Without a major fix, traffic jams were expected to eclipse 16 hours a day by 2010.?
So why not make the $2.56 billion investment? It will be finished by 1998. That, at least, was the original budget and thinking when ground was broken on the Big Dig in September 1991 – a seven-year detour. Boston’s city streets’ final restoration ended in 2007, nearly a decade late. And the cost of the project is estimated to be $24 billion, nearly 10 times the original estimate. The final tab is expected to be paid off in 2038.
It's no surprise that the project was dogged by scandals. The most tragic happened on a summer night in 2006 when a 26-ton highway tunnel ceiling collapsed killing a female motorist. At the time, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was at his New Hampshire vacation home. Though he moved swiftly, his administration was roundly criticized for hiring Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff to inspect the ceiling repairs. Bechtel had overseen construction of the tunnel, which was a glaring conflict of interest with Romney later admitting it was a mistake. A 2007 National Transportation Safety Board report criticized the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, designers, inspectors, and many of the Big Dig’s contractors. Had they considered that the epoxy glue holding support anchors for the ceiling panels could slowly pull away, the accident could have been avoided. In 2008, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff agreed to pay more than $400 million to settle a lawsuit the state filed over the collapse.
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Danielle DiMartino Booth is founder and Chief Strategist at?Quill Intelligence