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Is Boston's Big Dig a Big Mistake?


monsoon

Is Boston's Big Dig a Big Mistake?  

176 members have voted

  1. 1. Is Boston's Big Dig a Big Mistake?

    • Yes
      45
    • No
      131


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That's a very interesting concept that I've never considered.....I would consider it the subject of an excellent trade journal article if you could find enough anecdotal evidence of review audits. Of couse, your position within a government agency might make you a politcal casualty if you were to pen your real name....

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That's a very interesting concept that I've never considered.....I would consider it the subject of an excellent trade journal article if you could find enough anecdotal evidence of review audits. Of couse, your position within a government agency might make you a politcal casualty if you were to pen your real name....

I would rather be somewhat anonymous on this. Suffice to say, I have been involved in a number of large procurements and it always happens. The companies that bid on these projects spend a very large percent of their money on lawyers rather than engineers for this specific reason. For every thing that you don't deliver because it wasn't specific enough in the contract or everything you do deliver that came to seem important but wasn't in the contract, you get to charge more and/or deliver less, which translates into income for the contractor.

Frequently the procurement and contract people in government contracts came up by apprenticeship, starting in "purchasing" (paper towels, etc) and worked their way up until they became managers. No offense to these people but they are usually not formally trained in the art of contract writing, which is a dark and mysterious art. Governments should recruit, compete and pay for people who are good enough at this to beat their contrators at their own game. No doubt that many of the deficiencies in a massive monster like the big dig were due to contactors concluding that "you said the bolts had to be 1/4", not that they had to hold the roof up" and that sort of thing. You get what you pay for in this business.

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Downtown Toronto's only freeway is only 3 lanes each way at it's widest, and only 2 lanes each way through part of downtown, and downtown Toronto has far, far more office space and office workers than downtown Boston. It works fine because it forces people to commute using public transit, and encourages different patterns of development. If this freeway was widened, it would just attract more traffic, and would still be just as slow-moving and congested, and more people would be driving leading to undesirable development patterns and worse pollution.

I'm surprised though that anyone on an urban development board would refer to Jane Jacobs as "this person". She is the most famous and respect urban expert in the entire world, and has been for decades. Her thoughts and theories have proven right for decades. It is well-known that she is against increasing freeway capacity downtown, and for good reason.

I agree with this. If you build bigger roads, the amount of traffic will increase to fit the road. this is what happened along the coast of Connecticut in Fairfield County. When I-95 was built, it was supposed to speed transit along that coast. Now I-95 is too small. If the road is enlarged, at huge cost to taxpayers, it will simply fill up again. much of the traffic is from the trucking industry. Maybe tolls should be re-instated on that highway, or better water-links developed.

the big dig was probably a victim of cronyism and shoddy construction.

As for the idea that it linked the south shore to the north shore, I think the 128/I-95 beltway does that, not the central Artery/big dig. I think the big dig is for travelers to Central boston, including Logan. Which begs the question why are there not better mass transit links to Logan?

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I'm not from Boston nore ever been there, but I did watch a program about the Big Dig on the History Channel. I am blown away on how they pulled it off without shuting the whole city down. I wish that the highways here in Grand Rapids, MI where put undergound like this. US 131 took out alot of historic buildings in our Downtown, and I-196 had a negative effect by dividing a thriving neighbor hood in half.

I wish I could put all expressways underground. And I think it's great that it has been done in Boston. I think It'll be a better place without the Central Artery. It doesn't solve the car problem, though.

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Thanks to the Big Dig, I can service Clients on the South Shore and be based on the North Shore. And my Husband, can work on the South Shore and live on the North Shore. Without the Big Dig, his 20 minnute commute would be 1.5 hours. The old elevated was stacked with cars morning, noon and night. It literally never ended.

So much of hte attention was focused on the I-93 tunnels that replaced the elevated highway through the city. But the Big Dig is so much more (already discussed in this thread). The direct extension of I-90 and tunnel to Logan is brilliant. Logan is far more accesible now to all of Boston and especially from the South Shore.

The section where the old elevated stood is being turned into a beautiful parkway which will complement and reconnect the neighborhoods divided by the old elevated.

It was a huge project but worth every dollar spent!

This may be a silly question, but if you both work on the South Shore, why don't you live there?

Secondly, unless other projects are done (maybe they have been) it's quite likely that in 5 to 10 years this enlarged highway will once again be crowded with cars. It depends on what the rate of increase of car travel is. I know that in the Capital District, we've had large growth in car traffic over the last 10 years.

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The 1.1 million figure includes commuter rail and buses. I'm sure this has been mentioned already. Boston has an big public transit system. But the commuter rail is split into two disconnected systems that could have been connected during the big dig, especially since the new tunnel runs between the one-mile gap between the two disconnected hub stations.

Is it the 3rd largest by track distance?

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For those of you who don't know Boston has the third largest subway system in america behind NYC and Chicago so Boston doesn't need more trains because they already have an adequate public transportation system with an average ridership of 1.1 million a day.

Just wondering what would have happened if the cost of the big dig where to be put into expanding Boston's subways. Would more people us it instead of there cars to commute to and from town? But then Boston would still have the "Green Monster" slicing the city in half.

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Well, one of the justifications for the big dig was that alot of traffic along 93 was not destined for Boston but only travelling through. I don't know if I believe that, but that was supposedly the case.

Having grown up on the Cape, I can say I used 93 to Route 1 to reach New Hampshire and Maine, and did not use 128 for that trip. Even with the congestion, it was still slightly faster than looping on 128.

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  • 1 month later...

I say YES... Boston has a great transit system (actually, I think it has less traffic than the DC Metro) and a very geographically tight peninsula downtown that juts into Mass Bay. Boston has the best system imho of any medium-sized city. I think it would have been much more worthwhile to have extended a 4-track tunnel linking North and South train stations. This would have allowed thru MBTA commuter and Amtrak service along with the possibility of electrifying most or all of MBTA Commuter a-la Philly

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Is it [boston's rapid transit] the 3rd largest by track distance?

I don't think it is. Nor do I think it has the 3rd largest ridership. My numbers/memory are rough but I think it's something like:

Size:

NYC: 240+ route miles

Chicago: 107

DC: 106

SF (BART alone): 103

LA: 73

Boston: 67.5

Ridership:

NYC

DC

Chicago

Boston

... again, if someone has the actual numbers, that would be great. You could check Wikipedia for a link; I'm running, or I'd check, myself.

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Is it [boston's rapid transit] the 3rd largest by track distance?

I don't think it is. Nor do I think it has the 3rd largest ridership. My numbers/memory are rough but I think it's something like:

Size:

NYC: 240+ route miles

Chicago: 107

DC: 106

SF (BART alone): 103

LA: 73

Boston: 67.5

Ridership:

NYC

DC

Chicago

Boston

... again, if someone has the actual numbers, that would be great. You could check Wikipedia for a link; I'm running, or I'd check, myself.

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Granted I'm not a Massachusetts tax payer, but for me the big dig has been a huge improvement. The north end is reconnected with downtown, the city's getting a lot more greenspace and getting in and out has been tons easier. For those not interested in buying the DVD of the Extreme Engineering episode, you can get it for 1.99 on the iTunes Store. Worth a watch.

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I've seen that Extreme Engineering, and I think while it has been very expensive, that it will pay for itself in increased economic opportunities and increased quality of life in downtown Boston.

I just finished reading a book about how during the 1960s, the construction of I-94 in St. Paul split the city's only predominantly black neighborhood, Rondo, in half.

I can understand freeways as a means to get from city A to city B, but they're very destructive of cities. In Minneapolis, it's quite obvious how much the freeway has divided neighborhoods. On the downtown side of the freeway, there are new condo towers and apartment buildings going up everywhere, and on the other side, beautiful victorian homes rot.

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I've seen that Extreme Engineering, and I think while it has been very expensive, that it will pay for itself in increased economic opportunities and increased quality of life in downtown Boston.

I just finished reading a book about how during the 1960s, the construction of I-94 in St. Paul split the city's only predominantly black neighborhood, Rondo, in half.

I can understand freeways as a means to get from city A to city B, but they're very destructive of cities. In Minneapolis, it's quite obvious how much the freeway has divided neighborhoods. On the downtown side of the freeway, there are new condo towers and apartment buildings going up everywhere, and on the other side, beautiful victorian homes rot.

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  • 3 weeks later...
One thing I can say, is that the roadway is one of the most confusing, stupidly planned out systems I have every driven on! Coming back from the airport, since you can't go straight onto the pike, you have to use surface arteries. And if you have no idea where you are going, it's a nightmare. It's a nightmare even IF you know where you are going - last time I came back from there I ended up on Storrow drive!
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  • 1 month later...
I've seen that Extreme Engineering, and I think while it has been very expensive, that it will pay for itself in increased economic opportunities and increased quality of life in downtown Boston.

I just finished reading a book about how during the 1960s, the construction of I-94 in St. Paul split the city's only predominantly black neighborhood, Rondo, in half.

I can understand freeways as a means to get from city A to city B, but they're very destructive of cities. In Minneapolis, it's quite obvious how much the freeway has divided neighborhoods. On the downtown side of the freeway, there are new condo towers and apartment buildings going up everywhere, and on the other side, beautiful victorian homes rot.

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Those people running red-lights to save time should consider that they live in one of the most densley populated cities in the country and deal with it, or give transit/bike riding a try. Why someone would want to even own a car in a place like San Francisco or New York for that matter is beyond me.

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The lack of freeways going through cities can be very destructive as well. After the Loma Prieta quake in 1989, San Francisco tore down the Embarcadero freeway (it was supposed to be a connection from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate Bridge but was never completed). It was called an eyesore and blocked views of the bay. They had been wanting to tear it down but the damage fromt he quake gave them the perfect excuse to go ahead and do it.

Guess what happened? Even though it didn't fully connect from one side of the city to the other, it took you a ways past a lot of downtown. So in order to get to the other side of the city, now you would have to go through a ton of signals. And trying to make it to destinations in time, people started red light running a ton more. They raised the fines a ton, and no change. So now you had great views of the bay for the wealthy condo owners and a lot of people dying. The more traffic you put on surface streets, the more pedestrian deaths you'll get and intersection collisions.

But you can see the water from those handful of floors in those few buildings downtown.

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  • 1 year later...

Here in Milwaukee they tore down the Park East Freeway and although development in that corridor has been slow so far this year we will begin to seel hundreds of millions of dollars of reinvestment in this corridor. Urban freeways more often than not bring blight, influence segregation, pollute and quite simply divide cities.

Wow, I'm surprised and sorry that you see it that way.

In my opinion, tearing down the Embarcadero was one of the best things that could have happened to San Fran's waterfront. It did more than open up views to Condo Owners. I've been down there and now people walk along the waterfront, go shoppin in the ferry terminal and fill the trolley cars on their way to Fisherman's Wharf and pier 39.

It's like opening up your front porch to welcome in the world.

Would you rather say "Wow, San Francisco, what beautiful city with a gorgeous, lively waterfront and spectacular bay views" or "San Francisco, they're highways are really wide and it's so easy to park!".

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For the sake of debate*, I'm from Massachusetts... and the traffic patterns and horrible signage patterns here even baffle me at times. Last weekend, I was trying to get on the Mass Pike from Huntington Ave. and it took sheer luck to find an entrance near the Pru. Went around in circles just trying to find the on-ramp.

I will say this. Yes, there's problems with leaks. Yes, the leadership was incredibly inefficient and made things way worse. But as said, there are many benefits to having open space connecting the North End and downtown slash Quincy Market/Fanueil Hall area again. A nice park in center city, more pedestrian friendly connecting the two neighborhoods. Traffic flows have improved in the area and from the outlying areas to Logan (as long as you know where the hell you're doing, which is a battle on itself.)

Getting improvements for mass transit is another battle for another day. Yes they should have done that connection between North and South Stations. It would have been wise, but it's not totally crucial. It's the same in New York between GCT and Penn Station ... how much travel between the two do you really expect? Nice yes, pivotal no.

Green E to Arborway won't happen, unless that line gets buried from Heath St. (or even Symphony) southward to Arborway. The trains apparently caused too many problems along the streets there, and I can imagine it's only worse since the drivers around here have a sense of entitlement and go around like maniacs.

Let battles be fought one at a time, soon enough we will see good mass transit in Greater Boston. If you start seeing little things coming done, like Blue to Lynn or Green to Medford, one will start rolling right after the other and the area will benefit in the long run.

* = I was born in Worcester and live in a suburb outside there, but on the CT side of the state line. For the sake of argument, since my area's sphere of influence is (connected to) Mass. (more than Conn.), I say Mass.

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There's just lots of issues regarding public transit in Boston...

- no Blue/Red connection

- no North/South link (Green/Orange to Red... meh)

- only real connection to Logan is the Silver (shuttle to Blue to anything else... ouch)

- the entire concept of the Silver Line

- Green B having way too many stops in such short distance of one another

- Green E's "temporary suspension"

- the rust buckets on Blue

- Worcester's terrible commuter connection

I could keep going, that's just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head.

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  • 1 month later...

^ There is water transport that connects Logan to downtown and South Boston.

Looks like there's progress being made in the way of extending the Green Line through Somerville to Medford. I just hope they don't put 100 stops on the line like the B Branch. Of course, it's not likely since it's not a streetcar-type ROW, so it'll probably be more like the D branch.

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