Talk:Big Dig (Boston, Massachusetts)/Archive 2005

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This an archive of the Big Dig (Boston, Massachusetts) talk page for the year 2005. Posts that span two (or more) years will be found in both years archives.

Posts for the year 2005 were moved here on 5 October 2007

Contents

[edit] I-695 ramps?

"Ultimately the Leverett Connector wound up using a pair of ramps originally constructed for Interstate 695, ironically making it possible for the mainline I-93 to carry more of the through traffic that was supposed to use I-695 in the original Master Plan." I'm not sure that is true. The stub ramps branching west off of the elevated portion of I-93 are still there, unconnected (I have a photo). Is there something else that I am missing? --agr 18:52, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

The I-695/I-93 interchange was planned as a complete interchange, so there were four stubs built. The 93S-695S and 695N-95N stubs were used to connect the Leverett Circle Connector. The 93N-695S and 695N-93S stubs remain unconnected (I don't understand why they weren't just demolished, which would have made the exit 26B interchange geometry somewhat better). The CANA ramps which would have provided the connections between 93S and 1N, and vice versa, had Scheme Z been built, are reflected in the closed-off extra lanes of the City Square tunnel. 121a0012 03:15, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cost

I was under the impression a large part of the cost was due to massive embezzlement. Is this not so? If it's true, it should be mentioned. Vivacissamamente 06:17, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if embezzlement is exactly the word; I think it comes under the more general category of legalized graft. There were a lot of kickbacks, especially on behalf of politicians in South Boston, which has a somewhat inflated level of influence in Boston government. There was a lot of payoffs to keep neighborhoods happy, and a lot of money just plain flushed down the drain by contractors. (I don't think Bechtel will ever get another major project in Massachusetts, at least not for the next couple of decades.) Haikupoet 06:44, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Cynicism is the heart of politics in Massachusetts, but despite numerous investigations by government and the press there has been no evidence of massive wrong doing. It is unlikely that this project could have been completed for less money given all its constraints. There were expensive design changes to mitigate various problems and community concerns, most resulting in a better project. Perhaps the biggest added cost factor (besides inflation) was keeping the existing Central Artery, subways and commuter rail functioning while the highway was constructed underneath. One small example: all the ground under the South Station approach yards had to be frozen solid to allow tunneling underneath without causing derailments. --agr 19:03, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Why is it not anywhere in this artical that this was a union-only job?[1]. I think it should be added since it was one of the reasons given for the over run of the cost and now seems to be the problem with the failures of the construction. --Napnet 22:06, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

The link posted by Napnet is a website maintained by an organization of non-union contractors, who would benefit from any finger-pointing toward the unions. I don't see that as a neutral source, any more than I would an article posted on an IBEW or AFL-CIO (or other union) website. As pointed out by Dsjochrist below, the budget in 1991 was not $2.8 billion, but that is what the article states. We need a better source than that if we want to imply that union labor is responsible for a significant share of cost overruns. The same goes for blaming unions in general for the tunnel failure, even if it is determined that shoddy workmanship is to blame. Otherwise it sounds like we're saying "non-union would have done it better." It may be a fact that it was a union-only job, but actually blaming the union-only policy for the project's troubles would violate NPOV. Vorenus 14:50, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I cannot believe this article was written relying on the lack of knowledge contained by newspaper reporters. The cost of the Big Dig was not initially 2.5 billion escalating the 14.625 billion. The 2.5 was a cost arrived at inception by state level departments. This was a figure on the conceptual design that did not include mitigation, site assessment, or environmental impacts. Once B/PB were brought onboard the cost was estimated in the 7 billion dollar range. Keep in mind that this was in 1985 and the project did not commence until 1991. Federal guidelines did not allow for inflation costs to be included. Later, the scope of the project was changed to include the capping of Spectacle Island, the covering of additional tunnels and the redesign of both the Fort Point Channel Crossing and the Charles River Bridge, all at additional cost. Additionally, mitigation efforts are estimated to have been the source of almost one third the cost escalation.Dsjochrist 15:05, 5 August 2006 (UTC)dsjochrist

[edit] Name

"Official"?? "The Big Dig" is the official name of the project?? Certainly it is the common colloquial name of the project, and the name used in the Boston Globe, but usually the official name is one that is known only to those who dig out legal documents --- acts of Congress and the like, and is not nearly so poetic. Michael Hardy 19:04 Jan 21, 2003 (UTC)

http://www.masspike.com/bigdig/index.html It appears to be the name MassPike Transit Authority uses, too. Official? I doubt it's listed in legal documents, but this is about as official as I would require. That's just me.

The official name is the Central Artery/Tunnel Project (CAT).

The orignial name, now shortened was Central Artery/Third Tunnel Project.15:05, 5 August 2006 (UTC)dsjochrist

[edit] re last edit

O.K., so the last para. of the lead now looks better, but is it more/less/the same in accuracy? Whoever wrote "in '03 dollars" wrote it that way for a reason, and in addition the current phrasing makes it appear that some larger project has superseded the Big Dig.Sfahey 23:40, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Logo

IWBRNI someone would upload the original CA/T project logo. The project became well-known in the early days for its (now mostly abandoned) standards of graphic design; the logo and associated blue-and-yellow dust barriers and signage became quite familiar to Bostonians over the decade they were in use. 18.26.0.18 05:24, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Green Monster

I'm not a Bostonian, but doesn't Green Monster refer to the outfield wall at Fenway? Hence I removed the reference to the elevated central artery as such. Matthewcieplak 02:32, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It's definitely been used for the Central Artery, probably named after the wall at Fenway. --SPUI 02:55, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I've added the reference to Green Monster (disambiguation), and left the article without it. Without knowing the source of the name, (probably in reference to Fenway?) it's difficult to include except without context. So, if someone has a good idea as to its source, please let us know. Matthewcieplak 21:04, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've reverted the previous revisions referenced herein and added a citation for the reference "the Green Monster". This seems to be vernacular slang for the Central Artery. The article cited reinforces this theory as Boston mayor Thomas Menino used the term "Green Monster" publicly. However, Menino is not attributed as the creator of the term.--Deego1703 04:05, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] some updates for you all to hack at

I've added substantial information on deep background on things like the Inner Belt, the Leverett Connector, Scheme Z, and the community activism that surrounded the project over the years. That said, much of it could stand for considerable enlargement and/or breaking out of this article into separate articles. I've also added a couple of web references (somehow this article doesn't seem complete without the MIT/Rotch Library website linked at least). Might be some POV to clean up, certainly some misdirected data. I hope I haven't made too much hash out of the article. Haikupoet 06:44, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I would agree that your background on the Inner Belt and the highway construction moratorium possesses substantial POV, as it implies the moratorium was a poor decision and that further construction would have solved the congestion problem in Boston (it may very well have worsened surface street congestion). Those of us in the area who support neo-urbanism regard the whole situation as a narrowly-avoided disaster; just last year there were fliers posted throughout Cambridgeport, along the 695 route, saying "look what almost happened." All this conflict belongs in a separate article, of course, but this one should be modified towards NPOV and make it clear that it was the express highway/freeway system specifically that was/is deficient. The Pike extension is a worthy mention (and should go into the separate article as well). Good reference here --Jnik 21:49, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Actually to be perfectly honest I do think the moratorium was a good idea -- the design of the Master Plan was wrong to begin with, since it didn't take into account the neighborhood disruption it would create (and the environmental issues for parts of it were a little dicey as well) -- the Inner Belt in particular seems to have been very badly thought out, though the Northeast Expressway and Volpe's version of I-90 had some pretty bad issues as well (like gutting Cambridge in the case of Rt 2/3 and stopping several miles short of downtown for no obvious reason in the case of the Western Expressway). Feel free to make any changes you think are appropriate. Essentially what I was trying to get at was that there was a problem that needed solving, the solution on the table was rightly killed, but the problem still existed and had to be taken into account during the planning of the Dig. Haikupoet 01:11, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
I went ahead and tried to maintain the thrust of your work while removing what I perceived as POV. See what you think. --Jnik 20:18, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Freeway or Highway?

Why call the Big Dig highway a freeway if nobody in Massachusetts will ever refer to it as such. As is clear in the article on freeways, people from Massachusetts make no distinction between a freeway or expressway, and often use the term highway as a catch-all. There is no reason to assume that, since many other states make such a distinction, it should be exclusively employed in this article on a Massachusetts highway. There are no "official" definitions in English; we don't have the luxury of the Academie française, as the French do. Of course, this could be a blessing, since we're able to preserve important regional and cultural linguistic heritages.

In Massachusetts, the term freeway is rarely, if ever, used. Making it the exclusive term in this article, which is on a Massachusetts highway, does not make sense.--AaronS 23:43, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, it is the case in many locales, especially major cities with many such routes, to use the terms interchangeably. But a generic term like highway does not convey the sense of a multilane controlled access road to everyone who will read the article.
It is important to note that more than likely it will be non-Bostonians that are looking up information on the Big Dig, and will not have time to peruse the talk page to accomodate local terminologies. That being said, other options to maintain that extra meaning would be interstate (particularly for American readers), expressway (to a degree, but almost as generic as highway) or increasingly loosely autoroute or even autobahn.
To maintain the flow of the article, Interstate is probably unacceptable, leaving freeway and perhaps expressway the only logical options.
I hope I have contributed some useful points. --Alexwcovington (talk) 08:22, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. Expressway certainly seems workable. I just see no reason to use a term that is foreign to many people. Otherwise, we might as well call it a dual carriageway, as many people in the British Commonwealth do.

The problem is that both expressway and dual carriageway also include divided surface roads with at-grade intersections in some areas. Maybe we could say controlled access expressway to make it clear - controlled access redirects to freeway. --SPUI (talk) 20:47, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
In that case, why not just say controlled access highway? AJD 20:53, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
That works too, as long as we have something precise. --SPUI (talk) 21:26, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
All right, let's do it. AJD 23:24, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the co-operation.--AaronS 01:32, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Just FYI--the current draft MassHighway manual refers to limited-access divided highways as "freeways." --Jnik 21:32, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

The project is part of and funded by the Federal HIGHWAY Administration. 15:05, 5 August 2006 (UTC)dsjochrist

[edit] Six lanes?

I could have sworn the elevated Artery was only two through lanes in each direction, not three. Rather hard to check now, of course. Given that the tunnels are only three through lanes this wouldn't have been much of a capacity-building project. Someone want to correct me before I change it? --Jnik 20:23, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

It absolutely was six lanes. You may be confused because exit 26 was operated as an "exit only" in the last years of the old structure, so entering traffic from Leverett Circle did not need to merge. Even today, of course, there's a section of the Lower Deck that narrows to two general-purpose lanes, but there's still the HOV lane just over the barrier to the east. There was also a period where only two through lanes were available in the Dewey Square Tunnel due to construction sequencing. 121a0012 21:28, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

you can see all six lanes on google earth

[edit] At the time?!

"At the time, the Big Dig was the most expensive single highway project in American history." - Has there been something that has eclipsed the $14.6 billion price tag of this project?! Hbdragon88 07:36, 16 November 2005 (UTC)