[rockrr]

Seattle had the benefit of not having an 8-lane super highway that it had to bury,” says Dan McNichol...

Liar. The viaduct was 8-lanes. They just built a 4 lane tunnel to replace it. Actually being able to get around be damned!

[Steely Tom]

The mistakes of Boston’s Big Dig didn’t start to show up until the it had been open for four years, when a 24-ton chunk of ceiling fell on top of a car and killed someone.

The Seattle project hasn’t yet been open three weeks. Let’s wait and see a little bit before we declare it a thumping success.

[outofsalt]

Did they ever get the tunnel boring machine unstuck? It was disabled 1000 feet in the dig site for years, if memory serves.

[llevrok]

KING5 News (the most liberal of the 4 major stations in the area) fails to mention this tunnel is 3 years late and is $223 million over budget.

But when it’s not the government’s money, why report it?

[Seaplaner]

Why didn’t they just build a Bullet Train, like the one that’s working so well in California?

[Vlad The Inhaler]

They can thank labor unions and crooked politicians for the BIG DIG boondoggle.

BIG DIG original estimate - $2.4 Billion

BIG DIG final cost - $21 to $24 billion (cost plus interest)

https://www.boston.com/uncategorized/noprimarytagmatch/2012/07/10/true-cost-of-big-dig-exceeds-24-billion-with-interest-officials-determine

[Afterguard]

Isn’t this the Seattle tunnel project that they had the tunnel borer stuck in the hole for about a year +, and an extra 1$M or $2M over-run to get it out? Lol!

[rlmorel]

The cost of the Big Dig in Boston was no doubt greatly inflated by graft and corruption. But there are three major things that drove up the cost of the Big Dig massively that people outside the area rarely if ever hear about.

Disclaimer: While I like what the Big Dig did for Boston, as a conservative, I would never approve of the way it was funded. Never. I don't believe in having money taken from people in Montana to pay for highway projects in Boston. But that is the way, with all the political philandering and corruption was and still is done.

First, Boston had a history that bore heavily on the costs as it went along. In the 1950's when the Central Artery was built through the heart of Boston, thousands of people (I think 12,000) and hundreds of buildings were taken against the will of the residents in the North End (Boston's Little Italy). When the big dig was in the design stage, the state vowed (with a codicil in the written process) that nobody who wanted to stay would be forced to leave. So, they didn't use eminent domain, and paid some seriously big bucks to purchase property. One kind of humorous one (for me, at least) is a skinny, four story old tenement right next to The Boston Garden, surrounded by parking lots and ramps on and off the new roads. It looks so bizarrely out of place, but apparently the owner refused to sell regardless of price.

Every time I see that building I think of the movie "Up"!

Second, there were changes in environmental constraints that were not well understood, and at the time the big dig was taking place, they were coming out of the woodwork. The Howard Zakim Bridge spanning the Charles River, and the widest bridge of its kind built to date at a cost of between $100-150 million dollars, had to be redesigned. Why? Apparently the shadow of the bridge on the water was thought to prevent small sardine-like fish called "Alwifes" from migrating up or down the river. They had to do extensive redesign with special slats to allow light to reach the water below. Who knows what other bizarre environmental issues they had to deal with.

Third, huge areas of Boston were built on landfill, soil that had been moved from one area to another. This is one of the reasons they used a "dig and cover" technique as opposed to a tunneling technique. AND, they did this in one area where they actually had to build a large refrigeration unit that froze a huge section of ground in a key area so they wouldn't have to re-route a key commuter rail system and the main Amtrak system. The soil in that area was completely unstable. Crazy, but you can imagine it.

[NYAmerican]

Is it safe to assume this project was executed using solely “Green” energy? That the tunnel will be utilized by only clean energy Mass Transit vehicles?

[SuperLuminal]

Speaking of Boston's "cut and cover" disaster: I remember the Boston area when it was "duck and cover"... In elementary school we spent lots of time sitting on cardboard under desks and in hallways..

Had an 80-year-old teacher who would tell us that the "thunderstorms" would be over soon... Like us 8 & 9-year-olds were really stupid...

[Gay State Conservative]

The one thing that Congresscritter Barney Fag said that I agree with was a comment that he made about Boston's "Big Dig":

"It would be cheaper to raise the city than to lower the highway".

[stylin19a]

over budget and behind schedule...that’s waaaaaaaay different.

[ronnie raygun]

Costly mistakes were on purpose to keep the job continuous and on going for years guaranteeing fed money another boondoggle rat scam where everyone makes money, politicians, contractors, unions, and everyone in between. High speed rail dream in California comes to mind another siphon

[CtBigPat]

Meanwhile, in China:

The Grand Tour: China's Road Network

[Rurudyne]

Without the Mafia and corrupt politicians the Big Dig would have avoided problems with the Big Dig.

[9YearLurker]

Mistakes? The Big Dig had to be the most successful expansion of graft, corruption, featherbedding and any possible kind of public works project overrun in history! By the time it was done, there was wasn’t a pol, bureaucrat, or union thug that hadn’t made out like a bandit.

[gogeo]

"The Big Dig was much shallower; therefore, the whole city was ripped up. They call that kind of construction cut and cover,” he explains . . .

I'm impressed. Part of the "Big Dig" goes under Boston Harbor. How did they manage to do cut and cover there?