Big Dig Tunnel Collapse

Speaking of emergency ramps, why don't they open the North Street ramp into the Callahan tunnel? That would give northbound I-93 traffic an easy entrance to the tunnel without detouring onto Boston surface streets. All they need to do is open the metal gate.
 
Its help traffic wise is marginal at best.
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I need to get up to Logan today from Rhode Island. The Teddy is probably shut down. I will be thinking the exact opposite as I go an extra 18 hours to get to my destination.
 
castevens said:
Its help traffic wise is marginal at best.
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I need to get up to Logan today from Rhode Island. The Teddy is probably shut down. I will be thinking the exact opposite as I go an extra 18 hours to get to my destination.
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What? You'll be on 93 North, Get off on the storrow exit and use the callahan. 18 hours? more like 1.8 minutes. Or somewhere in the range of 18 minutes.
 
So I over-exaggerated well past the point of obviousness.... But I feel like i should state that, just because you seemed to take me seriously.

MY point was that it took me 45 minutes to get to Logan, now it would take me (according to your calculations) over an hour. For the record, it took me an hour and a half. That may just be a "marginal at best" help with traffic, but it's a whole ton less time for me.
 
"Big Dig" Collapse a Blow to Urban Dream

By Jason Szep Tue Jul 18, 2006

BOSTON (Reuters) - Boston's $15 billion "Big Dig" was meant to inspire awe, an engineering marvel on scale with the Panama Canal that would thrust U.S. cities into a new era.

Instead, it faces a crisis of public confidence after a fatal tunnel collapse that could derail plans for other U.S. urban mega-projects.

With 7.5 miles of underground highway and a 183-foot (56 meter) wide cable-stayed bridge, the Big Dig replaced an ailing elevated expressway to fix chronic congestion and reunite downtown Boston with its historic waterfront neighborhoods.

But cost overruns, leaks, delays, falling debris, criminal probes and charges of corruption plague the nearly completed 15-year project, giving ammunition to opponents of similar plans in other cities considering tearing down aging elevated highways built in a construction boom in the 1950s and 1960s.

Now, with motorists afraid to travel through Big Dig after a woman was killed last week by falling cement, those skeptics have their most persuasive case yet.

"When things leak and certainly when things fall down that aren't suppose to, clearly that undermines people's confidence in government's ability to deliver," said David Luberoff, a Harvard researcher and co-author of "Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment."

Seattle, he said, will struggle to convince voters that replacing the earthquake-damaged Alaska Way Viaduct on its waterfront with a $3 billion to $3.6 billion tunnel is worth the cost. Brooklyn, whose waterfront could be transformed if an elevated expressway were buried, faces a similar problem.

RISKS

"The risks of building an urban tunnel are huge," said Cary Moon, a director at People's Waterfront Coalition, a Seattle-based organization that wants to prevent construction of a new highway on Seattle's waterfront.

"Given the very limited use our highways have relative to highways in Boston, it's just preposterous to think taking that risk and expense is necessary," he said.

Marianne Bichsel, a spokeswoman for Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, an advocate for building a tunnel, chafes at comparisons between Seattle's tunnel proposal and the Big Dig.

"It's a straightforward tunnel project. We are also not under any structures like there were in Boston," she said.

Luberoff doubts the Big Dig would have been built at all if the full costs were known at the start, and he reckons few U.S. cities will attempt such a grand project after Boston.

Burying the highway was originally estimated to cost $360 million in the 1970s. That ballooned to $2.5 billion in the 1980s, or $4 billion in today's dollars when factoring in inflation -- meaning the real costs quadrupled.

"The project has been like a nightmare," said former state Inspector General Robert Cerasoli, whose December 1998 report found widespread safety flaws in the project's Ted Williams Tunnel similar to those suspected in last week's collapse.

"Those problems are still sitting there," he said.

Still, many Bostonians praise the Big Dig while grumbling about its execution. About 260 acres of new parks, trees and sidewalks have been freed by it. The drive through Boston is faster than ever. Tourism has been given a boost.

"Every city would love to do it and almost every city could make a case for it," said Dan McNichol, author of "The Roads that Built America."

McNichol said other cities that could benefit from a Big Dig-style underground highway system include Philadelphia, where an elevated section of Interstate 95 divides the city from the Delaware River, and St. Louis, where Interstate 70 runs along the Mississippi River.

(Additional reporting by Daisuke Wakabayashi in Seattle)
 
Now, with motorists afraid to travel through Big Dig after a woman was killed last week by falling cement, those skeptics have their most persuasive case yet.
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I was listening to talk radio the other day and tons of people were calling in saying they were afraid to use the tunnels so when they drove thru they were constantly looking up at the ceiling.

Afraid they say, but not afraid enough to use the T.
 
Scott said:
Afraid they say, but not afraid enough to use the T.
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Apparently they are taking the T... and finding that commuter rail is broken too:

The Globe said:
MBTA commuter rail, the new way to work for thousands because of the Big Dig tunnel closings, struggled yesterday with new speed restrictions and disabled trains that delayed and infuriated riders.
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I put up a separate thread about the commuter rail technical difficulties since that's a whole separate can of worms.
 
I was reading an article just yesterday in the same paper that said the commute went pretty well over all. Then this morning I was reading Eilene McNamaras otherwise good article and according to her the Washington Street Silver Line connects with Logan Airport and the T has been losing ridership at a time when our system grew from 8th or 9th, to 5th in the country.

Facts are not always conducive to a good story and reporters love to shoot from the hip. Let me get this straight, the McMansion folks who are willing to spend 3 hours a day in their car, moving at a snails pace are complaining about unexpected delays and crowded trains?

Here's an idea, move close to your job like I did.
 
Amorello agrees to resign
By Andrea Estes and Russell Nichols, Globe Staff, and Andrew Ryan, Globe Correspondent
Thursday, July 27, 2006

Massachusetts Turnpike Authority Chairman Matthew J. Amorello agreed to step down this morning just hours before a scheduled termination hearing in the office of Governor Mitt Romney.

"He will resign effective Aug. 15 as the chairman and a board member of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority," Romney said at the State House this morning. "The discussions for his resignation and the negotiations associated with it began in earnest following the decision of the Supreme Judicial Court yesterday."

Amorello, who had repeatedly rebuffed calls for his resignation since a motorist died in the partial collapse of a Big Dig tunnel, lost a bid Thursday to block today?s hearing before a state Supreme Judicial Court justice.

The chairman, who will talk to the media later this morning, accepted a six-month severance package with health coverage, sources said. Amorello makes $223,000 a year and will continue to be paid through February 2007.

Sources said that Romney signed a 1 ? page agreement finalizing Amorello's departure after a long night of negotiations. Amorello signed the document this morning.

"Cleary it will save the taxpayers and the ratepayers the cost of an extensive legal battle," Romney said. "And it also allows the citizens and toll payers to have confidence again the Turnpike Authority."

On July 10, 12 tons of concrete ceiling tiles cascaded into the Interstate 90 connector tunnel and killed Milena Del Valle, 38, of Jamaica Plain. The connector, which links Massachusetts Turnpike with the Ted Williams Tunnel, has been closed since the accident. Officials have shutdown additional sections of the tunnel system after inspectors found more potentially dangerous bolt fixtures.

Amorello, 48, a former Republican state senator, was appointed chairman of the Turnpike Authority by Governor Jane M. Swift in February 2002.

On Thursday, SJC Justice Francis X. Spina rejected a petition from Amorello to block this morning?s hearing, clearing a legal hurdle for the governor as he tried to oust the chairman. Spina ruled that the closed-door hearing could have gone forward today because if Amorello lost his job, but was reinstated, he would have likely gotten his back pay. Therefore, Spina said, Amorello had not demonstrated that the proceeding would have caused irreparable harm.

Romney charged in a letter dated July 17 that Amorello had "substantially mismanaged" the Big Dig project. The governor wrote that he "failed to ensure that the bolt fixtures supporting the concrete ceiling slabs were timely and properly inspected."

The faulty bolt fixtures in the connector tunnel are at the crux of the investigation into the ceiling collapse and have been found elsewhere in the Bid Dig.

Since the accident, Amorello has defended his tenure at the Turnpike Authority, saying that he stabilized the cost of the $14.6 billion project and that the connector tunnel was built before he became chairman.


Posted by the Boston Globe City & Region Desk at 09:28 AM
 
It's about time, but they shouldn't be paying him his normal salary until 2007 (when his term would have expired anyway).
 
Mitt should resign too, he's been Governor for the last 4 years and this happened while he was in charge. He wanted the job, but didn't want to do the job and now suddenly he's forced to take it seriously.

If he resigned he could go back gallivanting across the country running for president and telling them what a bunch of a-holes we are in Massachusetts, only we the MA taxpayers would not have to foot the bill.

BTW That crash you heard in the tunnel wasn't another ceiling collapse but the chances of Mitt being nominated by the GOP exploding on the floor. The Big Dig and foolishly running against his own state, will be a millstone around his neck and members of his own party will eat him alive for being from MAAss-achew-setts.
 
Yeah, and all of the political hacks in the Legislature ought to resign as well. After all, have of them got paid off by Bechtel.
 
^ That's what I'm talking about....

Romney is now ready to put the guy who mysteriously LOST over $9 million during the Malone treasury, in charge.

Judge, jury and executioner, huh?... No, what we need is transparency not the blame-game.

Mitt, resign now ya hack!
 
Tommy Trimarco, look him up, see what I mean. There is also one Judy Pagliuca wife of Romney's partner at Bain Capital, according to Peter Gelzinis at the Herald.

Now I know and you know that the Herald has completely abandoned any journalistic principals for sensationalism but the facts seem to be right in this case.
 
Matt?s other mess: Amorello did not deliver on development
By Scott Van Voorhis
Boston Herald Business Reporter
Friday, July 28, 2006 - Updated: 10:41 AM EST

Departing Big Dig chief Matt Amorello won?t win any awards for his stewardship of the project?s troubled underground tunnel system.

But some would say his work above ground on the project?s extensive tract of Hub real estate was just as bad.

As head of the $14.6 billion Big Dig and the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, Amorello had a real estate portfolio the nation?s top builders could only envy.

He oversaw choice tracts of downtown land once covered by the rusty Central Artery. And he also had control of the Turnpike?s canyon-like stretch of Boston roadway, which many believed was prime territory to be decked over for towering new air-rights projects.

But instead of glistening new commercial and residential projects, Amorello?s reign generated nothing but paper plans when it came to new development.

?Let?s put it this way: He placed his bets on the table and, unfortunately, a number of those were losing hands,? said David Begelfer, head of the local chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties.

While developers were pushing to build on the so-called Bulfinch Triangle near North Station, Amorello?s real estate crew kept them on hold for years.

Instead, the Big Dig chief promoted a tract of highway-crisscrossed land near South Station dubbed ?South Bay.?

Project officials touted the site?s potential as a launching pad for Boston?s tallest tower yet. It would be a cash cow that would bring in well over $100 million, officials believed.

Instead, officials got just one bid for reportedly less than a third of that.

Amorello also had high hopes for an giant air-rights project over the Turnpike near Fenway Park.

That project was also awarded to a single bidder, John Rosenthal, but was effectively scuttled after fierce opposition from the Boston Red Sox.

The one big exception could turn out to be the $600 million Columbus Center air-rights project slated for a deck over the Turnpike between the Back Bay and South End.

That project was marked by hundreds of contentious and often angry meetings with neighborhood residents. A long-promised groundbreaking has yet to happen.
 
Well this is interesting. I didn't realize just how rich our history of corruption was.

A usable past
In 1980, the Ward Commission exposed a culture of corruption and brought about far-reaching reforms. Can its lessons
By Dave Denison | July 23, 2006

TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS AGO a group of seven citizens was assembled and asked to explain how so much could go wrong with public construction projects in Massachusetts-and to recommend solutions. Led by John William Ward, the former president of Amherst College, the commission produced a document so extensive and meticulous, so full of measured outrage, that it did what few at the time expected. It changed things.

After an inquiry lasting two years, eight months, and 18 days, the Ward Commission's final report-weighing in at more than 2,000 pages-landed with a thud in the State House on the last day of 1980. ``We have learned that corruption is a way of life in Massachusetts," it declared. It was news many in the Legislature were not initially moved by. But the report generated intense media coverage. Some of its findings led to criminal prosecutions. And most of its recommended reforms eventually became law.

The Ward Commission led to the creation of the first-in-the-nation state inspector general's office. It led to strict laws regulating the awarding of state building contracts, which previously had gone mostly to companies that funneled contributions to the governor's campaign coffers. By the 1990s, the Ward Commission reforms were sometimes referred to as ``sacred cows" by those who believed Massachusetts construction had become over-regulated. In recent annual budget recommendations, Governor Mitt Romney's office even proposed abolishing the inspector general's office.

But when water started leaking into the newly constructed Central Artery tunnels a couple of years ago, some lawmakers began to suggest it might be time for ``another Ward Commission"-a special independent body to look into what went wrong with the massive Big Dig project. Now, with the death of Milena Del Valle in the I-90 connector tunnel, at least one bill is already in the works to create a special panel modeled on the Ward Commission.

``I think it would be a tremendous idea for an independent body to go back and review the history of the Big Dig and really tell the story of what happened here," says current Inspector General Gregory Sullivan. ``A lot of facts would come out that would really amaze people."

``The system failed here," says former Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, who also supports the idea. ``I think we do need to have some kind of independent review of how we got here and why we got here."

Blue-ribbon commissions come and go, but as attention turns to the Big Dig investigations, it's worth asking what made the special commission led by John William Ward so special. Could something similar work today?

. . .

The Ward Commissionwas created in the wake of the 1977 scandal surrounding the construction of the University of Massachusetts Boston campus. Two state senators were convicted on extortion charges for accepting payoffs from a New York construction management company, McKee-Berger-Mansueto (MBM), involved with the project. When investigators found not just payoffs to state officials, but inferior workmanship on new buildings, Attorney General Francis X. Bellotti and state representatives Phillip Johnston and Andrew Card pushed for a commission to look into the MBM scandal and all other state and county construction projects through the 1960s and 1970s.

``There was a real crisis of confidence in the integrity of the public construction process," recalls Nick Littlefield, who left a position teaching criminal investigation at Harvard Law School to become chief counsel of the Ward Commission. ``What we showed was that corruption wasn't a victimless crime," Littlefield says. ``It cost the state a fortune."

Thomas E. Dwyer, founder of the Boston firm Dwyer & Collora, who worked as a deputy counsel for the commission, recalls that Massachusetts had tried special commissions before to investigate crimes, but ``the only one that survived with its reputation intact is the Ward Commission." He credits Ward's independence and ``great moral compass" with making it work.

Littlefield says Ward, who was appointed by then-Governor Michael Dukakis, was ``a brilliant choice" to run the inquiry. He had strong Boston roots-he was, in one friend's words, a ``naturally ebullient Irishman"-and he brought an accomplished historian's intellect to the job, as well as a reputation as a maverick.

To read the Ward Commission's report now is to be transported back to a time when men called ``Sonny" and ``Toots" were the people to see if you wanted to get something built in Massachusetts. The report's opening narrative does not mince words. Under both Democratic and Republican administrations during the 1960s and 1970s, ``the way to get architectural contracts was to buy them." The report discusses evidence of bribery, extortion, and a ``primitive" system of managing the state's business. It details the way contractors took ``low roads to high living." In short, the report said, ``The state was for sale."

The report noted that the Commonwealth appropriated more than $17 billion for construction projects between 1968 and 1978, and more than $7 billion had been poorly spent. A study conducted with the Harvard School of Design produced results that ``stagger belief," Ward wrote. In a sample of state buildings, 76 percent were found to have had ``significant defects."

By the early 1980s, Littlefield recalls, anticorruption campaigns were putting new leaders in elected office: Dukakis retook the governor's seat, Scott Harshbarger became Middlesex district attorney, and Raymond Flynn replaced Kevin White as mayor of Boston. Meanwhile, William Weld launched aggressive prosecutions as US attorney in Boston. The old styles of payoffs and influence peddling receded.

According to Dwyer, Ward viewed his work on the commission ``as his greatest accomplishment." Yet, in a sad personal twist to the story, when Ward's work was done there seemed to be no place for him in Boston. He moved to New York and struggled privately with depression. In 1985 he was found dead with a suicide note by his side.

. . .

The Ward Commission was given real power-to subpoena records, to grant immunity to witnesses, to hold public and private hearings, and to refer cases for prosecution. Telling the straight story about how things went wrong was only the beginning. ``The main point was to get laws changed," says Littlefield, now a partner at Foley Hoag who takes no position on the question of a new commission.

The commission did that-and yet given the decade-long record of the Big Dig, it is apparent that one of the Ward Commission's most idealistic stated goals was not achieved: ``to build the capacity for self-correction into government itself." The commission may have helped eliminate old-fashioned greasy-palm corruption, but it did not put in place a system of effective government oversight for an undertaking as vast and complex as the Central Artery project.

The Ward Commission report held out the hope that its reforms would ``create a future in the political life of Massachusetts where there would never again be the need for a special commission to investigate corruption and maladministration." Ward saw the need for a commission as proof that the normal processes of government had broken down. What we learn from the investigations in the coming months may clarify whether we have arrived at such a point again.

Dave Denison, a freelance writer living in Arlington, writes frequently for Ideas.

? Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
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The Globe said:
The Big Tangle

In the aftermath of the fatal I-90 ceiling collapse, a complicated legal fight has drawn in a phalanx of attorneys to defend pocketbooks and reputations. Such maneuvering has drawn comparisons to famed disputes in Boston history.

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By Sean P. Murphy and Scott Allen, Globe Staff | April 8, 2007

The tunnel ceiling collapse that killed a Jamaica Plain woman last summer has triggered one of the most complicated legal fights in Boston history, court observers say, already drawing more than 100 attorneys, 17 companies, and dozens of engineers and workers into the burgeoning lawsuits and criminal investigations spawned by the tragedy.

The stakes are high: The lawsuit brought by the family of Milena Del Valle could cost those found responsible for her death tens of millions of dollars, while the state is seeking at least another $35 million for repairs and other losses from the accident.

Meanwhile, a state special prosecutor began bringing witnesses last week before a new grand jury to determine whether anyone should face criminal charges in the design and construction of the Interstate 90 connector tunnel ceiling. And federal prosecutors are considering fraud charges against several companies, including the overall managers of Big Dig tunnel construction at Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff.

With so much legal crossfire, the companies and their employees are standing behind a phalanx of lawyers to defend their pocketbooks, their reputations, and, potentially, their freedom. Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, a joint venture of two enormous engineering companies, has hired David Kendall , the lawyer who defended President Clinton during his impeachment trial, to lead the defense against criminal charges.

"This case is about as complex as you will see in civil litigation," said William J. Dailey Jr. , Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff's lead lawyer in the Del Valle family civil lawsuit. In Dailey's 40-year legal career, he said, "I've never seen anything like it."

The price of so much courtroom wrangling, legal analysts say, could be long delays in getting a financial settlement for the three children and widower of Del Valle, people of modest means originally from Costa Rica.

M. Frederick Pritzker , chairman of the litigation department at Brown Rudnick Berlack Israels LLP in Boston, said he would not be surprised if the Del Valle family's lawsuit were bogged down by all the civil and criminal cases.

"Ultimately, it will sort itself out, but it could take years longer to resolve and cost much more" than if there were no criminal charges, Pritzker said.

The family's suit has turned into a legal traffic jam, as each defendant has sued others to shift financial responsibility. So far, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff and the other companies have filed a staggering 172 cross-claims against one another, each giving one defendant the right to seek money from another if they are blamed for Del Valle's death.

In addition, state special prosecutor Paul F. Ware Jr. has asked the judge in the Del Valle suit to freeze most activity for six months so that he can decide whether to seek criminal indictments without worrying that key witnesses could be called to testify publicly in a separate lawsuit.

Leo Boyle , lead attorney for the Del Valle family, has strongly opposed any delays. He told Superior Court Justice Stephen E. Neel in court last month that Ware "wants to come in here and say to the only innocent victim in all this that we want to stop you from finding the truth."

Ware insists that he is on the side of the Del Valle family. But he says criminal prosecutors have a job to do.

"What Mr. Boyle is really complaining about here is the criminal justice system," Ware told Neel. His boss, Attorney General Martha Coakley, has frozen the state lawsuit seeking financial compensation from 17 companies connected to the ceiling project.

Neel has not ruled on Ware's motion, but he has lamented from the bench on what he calls the "imperfect juncture" between civil lawsuits and criminal cases.

For the sheer amount of legal maneuvering, Pritzker said, the tunnel ceiling case invites comparisons to the famed 1970s dispute over a design flaw in the John Hancock Tower that caused windows to begin popping out, to the terror of the people below. John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. and the building's architect, general contractor, glassmaker, and structural engineer filed a total of six suits and countersuits against one another, creating a court file 6 feet thick before the suits were settled privately in 1981.

As with the windows dispute, it remains unclear exactly who is most to blame for the concrete tunnel ceiling that came crashing down just six years after it was built. Project documents show that designers cut corners on safety, workers made numerous mistakes in installation, and the state failed to inspect the job after it was completed. Dozens of companies, however, were in some way connected to the project, and the Del Valle family and the attorney general are not suing the same entities.

The National Transportation Safety Board could clarify some of those questions when it issues a final report on the causes of the accident, expected in July.

Dailey believes, however, that the federal and state criminal investigations make the ceiling case more complex than the Hancock windows or other famously tangled Boston cases such as the 1986 environmental lawsuit against W. R. Grace, which inspired the book "A Civil Action." Dailey said every defense lawyer in the Del Valle case has to simultaneously worry that anything a client says could be used by criminal investigators against him or her.

So far, at least 100 lawyers are involved in the various legal actions, including 45 who have made appearances in the Del Valle suit, at least 20 lawyers for the state and US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan, as well as criminal lawyers for the companies and their employees. The number probably will grow if criminal charges are brought: Special prosecutor Ware, brought into the case last month from the law firm Goodwin Procter LLP, has said he may recruit lawyers from his firm to assist if indictments are issued.

Yet Dailey, the lawyer for Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, said he is optimistic the Del Valle suit, at least, can be resolved relatively promptly once state and federal prosecutors clarify which criminal charges, if any, they will seek. Ware has said he and Coakley expect to decide by June whether to seek indictments. The US attorney's office has been less clear on its deadline for seeking fraud charges, though Ware said in court recently that their investigation "may go on for some number of months."

"I think this is going to be surprisingly quick in being resolved," said Dailey.

But Boyle, the lawyer for the Del Valle family, is less sure, fearing that Ware will ask again to delay the family's lawsuit if he obtains criminal indictments.

Legal analysts say that proving the ceiling accident was a result of criminal negligence will be difficult, because prosecutors must show that people knew the ceiling was dangerous when they opened the tunnel to the public. As a result, Boyle said, prosecutors could hold up his work, but fail to convict anyone. "My level of confidence that they're going to get to the bottom of what happened is very low," he said.

Sean P. Murphy can be reached at smurphy@globe.com.

? Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
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