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The Big Dig – America’s Greatest Highway Robbery began as a straight report of the shenanigans, deals, hustles, boondoggles and cons of the $15 billion dollar highway tunnel construction project through Boston.
But the author, Robert Skole, a veteran business and technology reporter, found that the Big Dig is so convoluted and confounded that nobody would believe it. The story could best be treated as a novel. Only imagination could do it justice. The story started out as a comedy, but it turned tragic on July 10, 2006, when a woman was killed by a three-ton concrete tunnel ceiling panel dropping on her car. Nobody knows what further tragedies are waiting.
The Big Dig fiasco has been running for almost 20 years – and at the rate it’s going will take another 20 years to unravel. Big Dig boosters claim it’s America’s largest-ever highway project, the Taj Mahal of tunnel systems. If so, it was designed by the Marx Brothers, built by the Three Stooges and managed by Willy Sutton.
So far, the Big Dig has swallowed more than twice the cost of building the Panama Canal, in current dollars! The majority of it was in Federal funding, so thank you, Mr. and Mrs. America, for decades of confusion, con-artistry and a problem-plagued tunnel system.
Oh, sure, the Big Dig honchos, and the media, always state the cost at $14.6 billion. But if you believe that figure, well, I got the Ted Williams Tunnel to sell you.
The Big Dig involved building vehicular tunnels beneath the John Fitzgerald Expressway that slashed through the heart of Boston; the new Ted Williams tunnel under Boston Harbor out to Logan International Airport; and the ugliest, clumsiest stayed cable bridge ever built, a bridge that easily-conned Bostonians actually believe is a work of art. The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, owners of the project, relied completely on two giant construction and engineering firms, Bechtel and Parsons-Brinckerhoff, who formed a consortium to design, engineer and manage the entire project. Oh, yeah, it was on a cost-plus basis. The more the job cost, the more the consortium earned. Nice work if you can get it -- a guaranteed profit contract, worth a couple billion bucks, at least.
The final piece of the project was tearing down the John Fitzgerald Expressway (named for a mayor of Boston, the maternal granddad of the Kennedy politicians). The overhead highway, known as the Central Artery, never should have been built in the first place, but genius city planners, mastermind transportation experts, thick-headed politicians and delighted contractors built it in worship of the automobile in the 1950s. In actuality, it was a monument to mass stupidity. As Europe was rebuilding cities destroyed in the war, highway fanatics – backed by jubilant federal, state and city politicians and business leaders – were joyfully demolishing historic buildings and neighborhoods in Boston, to create a ghastly “thruway” that was obsolete before it opened. The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway (named for the Kennedy mom, surprise, surprise) is being built on the surface above the tunnels, where the Central Artery blotted the cityscape for half a century. The Greenway project is slow-moving, in accord with the official motto of the Big Dig: “Hey, guys, don’t kill the job.”
The main tunnel has been named after the late Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Massachusetts Congressman and Speaker of the House from 1977-87, who was instrumental in getting federal funding for the Big Dig. An honest, highly-respected politician, he’d undoubtedly be turning over in his grave if he knew how project became a fiasco of historic proportions.
Playing cheerleaders to the Big Dig were tame Boston journalists, who naively, uncritically and respectfully echoed the publicity fed them by the Big Dig honchos and flacks. For years, the media referred to the Big Dig “an engineering marvel.” Never was heard a discouraging word. Never did the media ask embarrassing questions. Never were designs or engineering or construction critically questioned. It took leaking tunnels and falling ceilings to wake up the sleeping reporters. And even when awake, they remain hoodwinked, not digging into the real reasons why specific designs were selected. One example is the use of old fashioned mammoth centrifugal fans for the ventilation system instead of far more economical axial fans that are used in tunnels worldwide. To tunnel ventilation experts, the Big Dig’s choice of ancient technology can only be explained by the fact that it’s extremely expensive.
One vent building, at Haymarket Square, was designed as part of a new parking garage, five floors of offices and a huge ground floor space. No journalist has dug into why the Big Dig spent 100 million dollars or more to build the block-square structure, and then leave its office and retail space empty, now going on five years. Especially when the ground floor could be used for a supermarket that the adjacent North End and West End neighborhoods have been clamoring for. But the way things have gone, perhaps the building is unsafe for occupancy.
Of course, it’s a bit embarrassing to ask questions now, after a decade of calling the Big Dig “an engineering marvel” and not noticing this massive vent building white elephant – almost directly across the street from City Hall. Nor did the media follow up to see what happened as a result of a scathing report in 2001 by the state Inspector General detailing Big Dig cost overruns, design and constructions faults, shoddy workmanship and cover-ups.
The cast of characters in this new novel include magnificent local and national politicians, construction managers, contractors, consultants, engineers, designers, architects, flacks, hacks, quacks, phonies, finaglers, happy bankrupts and billionaire builders laughing all the way to the bank.
Watch for the novel: The Big Dig – America’s Greatest Highway Robbery
Meanwhile, please visit www.JumpinJimminy.com
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