Bostonites, don't you love misinformation on the Big Dig?

[JasonG]

pmark-

I hope your right but I have serious doubts about speeding things up with the big dig. Like you said though at least it will make for a more attractive city (if it's ever completed).

I don't think they ever paint those bridges (from what I can tell over >10 years) which I think is the main reason why they have deteriorated so much. Maintenance is much cheaper than replacing the entire bridge but noone seems to ever realize that. The Longfellow (salt and pepper) bridge is just as bad.

You're right Buddhist. It usually isn't that bad and shouldn't take more than 30 minutes to get through the airport/tunnel traffic usually. It just feels like 3 hours sometimes .

Jason

 

[rahvin]

<<The Big Dig really annoys me You guys have some good senators to get such a rediculously expensive project funded federally, that's all I have to say.>>

Tip O'neil. Head of the Senete Transportation committe (at the time) and his final little &quot;gift&quot; to his state on the year of his retirement. Most expensive transportation project ever undertaken. The overuns are understandable though if you understand the technical issues of what they ran into. Really laying that tunnel accross the bottom of the bay turned out to be a lot more difficult than they imagined. On the upside, we know how to do it better next time.

 

[DadofOne]

The tunnel was easy--they sank it in sections. The hard part, and the reason the Ted is still restricted to comm. vehicles is that the ends of the tunnel ARE NOT CONNECTED TO MAJOR ROADS!--no place for a lot of trafic to go! The end that is connected to the Mass Pike(another longstanding employment zone for legislative family members) is still under construction, and has to pass under half the commuter rail yards--they did this by freezeing the ground, and pushing tunnel segments under the tracks, thru the frozen ground. The roadways on the Airport end have more than a passing resembelence to earthworms in love.....

 

[rahvin]

<<The tunnel was easy--they sank it in sections.>>

Yea, they sank it in the water, it settled on the bottom of the bay and began to sink into the muck. The stuff on the bottom of the bay was softer than they anticipated, if I remember correctly they spent something like a billion dollars (engineering, construction and disposal fees) dredging the tunnel location to remove unsuitable material. The geotechnical issues have been killing them, and probably account for over 50% of the overuns. I can probably check some old ASCE mags and find articles on it...

<<they did this by freezeing the ground, and pushing tunnel segments under the tracks>>

Where did you hear this? I want a reliable source for this info.

 

[pmark]

JasenG,

That comment about the paint was just a joke about how the crew teams of all of the colleges always paint their names on the underpassings of the bridges.

The thing about the Big Dig and speeding up traffic is that some people think that it will just attract more traffic and therefore never cure the traffic problem. Who knows right now....I'm just sick of seeing construction.