And it was an enormous undertaking. They had to build it under an active and busy city without shutting it down. The engineering was astonishing. We had a friend visit from California who had been involved in big construction projects in California for decades, and when we drove out of Boston after picking him up, he was astonished. He counted something like ten or fifteen of these giant cranes all over the city, and he had never seen more than three of those in one place at one time.
They actually had to build a giant freezer to actually freeze soil they were digging in, because much of Boston is built on landfill from the 18th and 19th centuries as the graphic below shows:
The soil was too wet and soft to tunnel in, so they froze it. (They had to, because active commuter trains were moving bare feet above where they were tunneling) Amazing and expensive.
I used to go into Boston a lot, but now, only out of necessity. I have grown to dislike cities for obvious reasons. But back when the Expressway was in place, you simply couldn't drive it at all most of the time except of the wee hours of the morning because it was so damned congested. And it was ugly as sin. Here is a picture of the part that went near Boston Garden before they pulled it down:
This is one of the nicer looking parts near Boston Garden:
This is what most of it looked like:
I will say, tearing that thing down changed Boston. My wife and I had not been in Boston for a while, and we took the train in, and as we came around City Hall Plaza and saw Boston Harbor, we both stopped in stunned realization...you could see the water. You could see the buildings. You could see everything now that the rusty piece of crap had been torn down. Even if it didn't improve traffic, it sure changed Boston for the better. That green, rusty, elevated Expressway was disgustingly ugly.
I have hard memories of the traffic jams. When I was in the Navy back in the Seventies, I remember getting stuck in traffic on the Expressway, probably around 10 PM on a Sunday night, trying to get to Logan Airport to make it back to NAS Cecil Field in Florida after being on leave, only a few miles from the airport, but...traffic was just completely bogged down. At 10 PM on a Sunday night. I remember screaming at cars to get out of the way, and very nearly tried to run up the Expressway with my bags and hoof it to the airport.
Ridiculous. I was terrified because I missed my flight, and there was no way to get another one before the next evening, so in a panic I called my shop in the morning, got my Petty Officer on the line, and told him what happened. He was really good, and covered for me, because they took being AWOL seriously back then.
No. It was a great improvement. Even though it was mind bogglingly corrupt, and pockets were being lined, it did vastly improve traffic, even if it is at 35 mph, I haven't been caught in a traffic jam in that part of the city since they finished the Big Dig.
LOL, that said, I don't even go in there now if I can avoid it. As far as I know, it might totally be traffic bound now, but I don't think so.
Besides the corruption, the Left drove up the cost of it immensely. What most people don't know is that back in the 1950's when the ill-fated ugly ass elevated Expressway was first built, I recall they used eminent domain and took houses, businesses, and land from something like 10,000 people. There was a huge amount of ill will that came from that, and when they did the Big Dig, they had to make a pledge to not shut down any businesses or take any homes from people who weren't willing to give them up.
Hilariously (at least to me) over near Boston Garden, there was one structure the guy wouldn't give up, and they had to build around his building...
Also, when they built the Zakim Bridge (yes, named for a flaming hack of a Democrat Party Leftist as is standard Massachusetts policy) they had to redesign the bridge to allow light to get through it because they said the shadow of the bridge would interfere with the migration up and down the Charles River of the Alwifes...a small sardine-like fish. That probably added a few tens of millions of dollars to redesign.
My wife and I did walk the bridge when it first opened back in 2004.
For all that, I appreciate the engineering feat and what it has done to improve the city and traffic (though I can no longer vouch for traffic patterns these days) I CANNOT countenance taking money from people in Texas, Montana, and even, probably, yes, Maryland to line the pockets of filthy grifters and politicians from our state.
Today, I would be against the project because of that. The corrupt waste of money is shameful to me, but that is how they did business up here in the days of Tip O'Neill, Ted Kennedy, et al. A murderers row of venal and corrupt Democrat politicians.
And still do, today.