"Dirty Old Boston"

Charlie_mta said:
I don't know if any more infrastructure mega projects will be built in this country, on the scale of the Big Dig. It was budgeted at about $15 billion at the time, as I recall, and ended up more. Inflate that massive cost to today's dollars, and that would be impossible to fund. Also, the political system today lacks any dynamic leaders like Tip O'Neil, who was the force behind obtaining the funding for the Big Dig.
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Grand central madison was a pretty huge infrastructure project. Also the 2 new gateway tunnels are pretty big and really important to the redundancy of the NEC. The transit expansions going on in both LA and Seattle are massive and when LA is finished its going to go from one of the worst transit systems in the country to the 2nd most extensive in the US. Seattle also just had a mini big dig taking down their elevated downtown highway viaduct and burying it under the downtown waterfront.

The gordie howe bridge also just opened which is a massive new international connection to canada which is directly connected to a brand new highway on the canada side and a new highway connection on the US side with 2 new massive points of entry that allows trucks to skip having to go through downtown streets on either side. Its also the longest cable stayed bridge in north american history.

Then you also have the massive laguardia redevelopment which took that airport from 3rd world to the 21st century all while it stayed open the whole time and right now jfk is going through a $19 billion modernization and expansion. TSMC is also building 4 semiconductor fabs in arizona with 2 already complete along with an r&d campus for $165 billion.
 
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stick n move said:
Then you also have the massive laguardia redevelopment which took that airport from 3rd world to the 21st century all while it stayed open the whole time and right now jfk is going through a $19 billion modernization and expansion. TSMC is also building 4 semiconductor fabs in arizona with 2 already complete along with an r&d campus for $165 billion.
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Slightly off topic but speaking of TSMC I do find it a little funny that much of the public discourse in the 2010s was concerned with companies being too short termist to adequately invest in the infrastructure of the future. Then immediately in the 2020s we jump into the largest private infrastructure expansion as a percent of GDP since the railroad boom of the 1870s lmao with the AI buildout.
 
stick n move said:
Grand central madison was a pretty huge infrastructure project. Also the 2 new gateway tunnels are pretty big and really important to the redundancy of the NEC. The transit expansions going on in both LA and Seattle are massive and when LA is finished its going to go from one of the worst transit systems in the country to the 2nd most extensive in the US. Seattle also just had a mini big dig taking down their elevated downtown highway viaduct and burying it under the downtown waterfront.

The gordie howe bridge also just opened which is a massive new international connection to canada which is directly connected to a brand new highway on the canada side and a new highway connection on the US side with 2 new massive points of entry that allows trucks to skip having to go through downtown streets on either side. Its also the longest cable stayed bridge in north american history.

Then you also have the massive laguardia redevelopment which took that airport from 3rd world to the 21st century all while it stayed open the whole time and right now jfk is going through a $19 billion modernization and expansion. TSMC is also building 4 semiconductor fabs in arizona with 2 already complete along with an r&d campus for $165 billion.
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You're right. There are still mega projects going on. I was thinking more of Boston in particular, regarding the lack of recent mega projects, although the new railroad lift bridge just starting construction at North Station is pretty impressive.
 
Charlie_mta said:
You're right. There are still mega projects going on. I was thinking more of Boston in particular, regarding the lack of recent mega projects, although the new railroad lift bridge just starting construction at North Station is pretty impressive.
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With our 40 trillion dollar national debt we could have built NSRL 2,666 times and had 10 billion left over, assuming it was around 15 billion dollars. Instead we got…. memories?
 
Finally found a photo of the New England Mutual insurance building close to the date it received it's addition. I've always loved seeing that you can see tower from random places all around Boston, but are completely unable to see it at the ground level. Nice view of the 1960s Cambridge skyline though
https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:sj13cp330
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Does anything remain of the theater tunnel system?
"In 1918, Blackall designed a network of underground tunnels and lobbies "that connected the Boylston Street subway station and the Little Building with the Majestic and Plymouth theaters" (Tucci 1978:219). This tunnel network and a second from Tremont to Washington Streets, accommodated a massive theater crowd arriving via subway."
This comes from a MACRIS write up of another building designed by Blackall: https://mhc-macris.net/details?mhcid=bos.1396
This is the first ive heard of these tunnels, and I cant seem to find any more info about them on the web. Anybody here know more about them and if anything is left?
 
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