Big Dig Tunnel Collapse

I don't know. I think it could have been done more efficiently, less expensively, safer and faster. But, what used to take up to an hour and a half now takes 20 minutes. And we lost the huge freeway that split the city. It's too early to say how the greenway will look and what it will do for the city.

However, nothing is worth the cost of human life. They better pull it together and get it fixed. Unfortunately, I think it will take forever.
 
bosdevelopment said:
It's safe to say after this accident that the big dig is officially not worth it.

It cost 14 billion dollars.

It caused traffic problems and cut off portions of the city for literally 15 years.

It's construction quality is questionable at best. I keep thinking back to an episode of the simpsons where the mob is hired to make ada accessible ramps to Springfield Elementary.

Its help traffic wise is marginal at best.

Its final outcome is a series of fields downtown, the best parcel of which isn't even being built upon because masshort is shiftless and probably absorbed all the money that was donated to them.

What's going on today isn't merely a "bump in the road" which will be forgotten 50 years from now like the JHT's falling windows. This project will always be remember as a boon goggle waste of money.
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I feel the same way.
 
On the other hand ... the John Hancock Tower also was late, over budget, and had serious design flaws. Only by sheer luck did nobody die as a result. Thirty years later, we admire it and don't think very often about its early problems.
 
the worse is still ahead

About a year before the big dig tunnel opened I got a private tour of the project from one of the quality engineers on the project. All he did was complain about the poor workmanship and inferior material they were using and how every time he reported his findings he was ignored. Half way through the tour I decided he was some kind of malcontent. Guess I was wrong.

I would expect we are yet to find out how badly this project was done. Modern Continental had about 25 percent of the contracts.


"
Mayor Thomas M. Menino sought to downplay Amorello's role in the Big Dig problems.

``This should not be about politics," he said. ``It's about safety and making sure that the tunnels are safe for people to drive through. I don't want to get involved in initial politics and who's right and who's wrong"
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Wasn't Les Marino, the owner of Modern Continental , on Menino's reelection committee a few years back?
 
I agree with Scott. Just because the project wasn't executed properly doesn't mean it was a bad idea.

I remember reading on the old board that building a series of bridges through the harbor was considered instead of the tunnel. Does any one have any more detailed information about that?
 
that was a proposal called the "Boston Bypass", or "B-B" for short. It was made by a North End resident who littered the downtown neighborhoods with signs promoting it.

Had it become a serious proposal, it would have raised numerous environmental objections. For one thing, the bridges would have used Castle Island as a landing point.
 
Are there any rough diagrams on where the bridges would have been?
 
Ron Newman said:
Scott said:
Should we have torn it down and not had a highway there at all?
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San Francisco did exactly this after Loma Prieta. It might have been the right choice here, too.

15 Seconds That Changed San Francisco
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Given what has been bantered about throughout the life of this forum, I can safely say that the majority on this forum don't want what was done in SF, regardless of the reason(s) for it being done.

ChunkyMonkey said:
As I recall, San Francisco's freeway really went nowhere
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It went somewhere, as much as the feeder ramps and roads eminating to and from the Central Artery went somewhere.
Just that in both SF's and Boston's cases, there wasn't alot of somewhere near where some of it went. (Heheheh)


The Embarcadero has one huge difference over the Greenway. It's more open along the water, for the most part, with fewer structures of lesser density between it and the water. It has become a promenade, quite successful in fact, but despite itself, imo, because it breaks alot of the 'rules'. It's quite vast in many locations. It has as many as six vehicular lanes in each direction in some places with two lanes of Muni trolley cars down the middle. For me, it is too wide and remains awfully anti-urban. The outdoor activities and cafes, etc., seem isolated within this vastness. Sitting at a cafe along this area is not what I would call a pleasurable experience with all the cars moving quickly by or idling while stuck in traffic.

But at the same time, as you can see from the 'aerial' photos below, the scale looks good in relation to the vastness of the Bay along with the heights of the street wall of towers on the downtown side. Like the Artery in Boston, these buildings were piled up behind, along, and against the now-demolished double-decked elevated highway.

As a pedestrian on the ground (sorry no pics loaded as yet), it is a daunting task to cross from the foot of Market Street to the Ferry Building, let's say. And don't give me 'the drama of the distance and vastness deifies the Ferry Building all the more' hooey. It only makes the building seem more aloof and dissociated from the city. And some people think it deserves to be, given its history.

Here's a few pics of the results below, if you've never experienced it in person.

pictures101large6du.jpg


pictures104large1jq.jpg


Maybe I'll get down to street level for some shots, if there's interest.


I've grown accustomed (resigned?) to it as it stands now. Honestly, I cannot see it being any other way given the requirement and need to maintain vehicular traffic patterns and given the volume of traffic it must handle which has required it to be designed the way that it is.
 
Garbribre, did they ever rebuild the Cypress? My father was on it the morning of the Loma Prieta. Scarey sh*t. I was in Fremont at the time just settling in to the Battle of the Bay World Series as the ground started to give way beneath me. I'm drunk, you can be honest. LOL. Have you ever been to those work parties and you are the one who just had waaay too much and said a little too much to everyone? Yeah, uh, that's me. There's nothing like the Champagne...of Beers.
 
^ **snicker**

Should I be honest about the Cypress, or the fact that you are drunk and the ground started to give way beneath you? :p

I don't have to be drunk to say a too much at the wrong place and time. :lol: I'll have plenty of opportunity to do so at next week's company picnic, though. Heheh.

I can start a new thread in the now-renamed other cities section about the Cypress location. Its original path was demolished long ago and re-routed without the double deck design. In fact, most of the double deck designs in the Bay Area are being slowly demolished and rebuilt as single, parallel, elevated structures. The new eastern span of the Bay Bridge is one example.

A crappy urban parkway with memorials, like a mini Greenway, was constructed along the original Cypress route, all at ground level. I've even got some archived pics I can post this weekend....maybe....time allowed.

Uh-oh. The off-topic police are going to lash out at us for what we've (I've) done to this thread.

Ahhhh, wtf. I'll throw you a bone.

picture031large2tl.jpg

The new Mandela Parkway where the Cypress once stood, looking north toward Emeryville. (eeeech. what rot.)

Sweet dreams and no bedspins, ZenZen. :wink:
 
My understanding is that the Silver Line buses are now using an 'emergency' on-ramp that is not open to normal traffic, and which enters the tunnel east of the collapse site.
 
Ron Newman said:
My understanding is that the Silver Line buses are now using an 'emergency' on-ramp that is not open to normal traffic, and which enters the tunnel east of the collapse site.
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That's terrific to hear.
 
Scott said:
Scott said:
As I recall, San Francisco's freeway really went nowhere
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Chunkymonkey said that, not me.
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Oooops.
Fixed.
I was going to respond to your post, began to, then changed my mind and didn't switch the quote tags out.
Saaaawwwwrrreeee!
Can't have something so awfully misguided attributed to you. :p
 
Wow, that parkway does look pretty crappy. I hope the greenway doesn't turn out like that!
 
My understanding is that the Silver Line buses are now using an 'emergency' on-ramp that is not open to normal traffic, and which enters the tunnel east of the collapse site.
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Does this mean that they're not doing that ridiculous zig-zag surface route? Is this permanent?!?
 
^ That could be the one good thing to come out of the tunnel mess. I'm not sure if using the emergency ramp eliminates the crazy zig zag, but using that ramp had been the MBTA's original plan for the airport route, so my guess is that it makes for a shorter route. Maybe once Romney is done crackin' skulls over at the MTA, he'll be able to get the authority to play nice with the MBTA on a permanent basis and we could all have a bus trip to the airport that sucks slightly less.
 
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