Will the freaking thing be done by the time of the convention? Have visited Boston area twice in the past two years, and can't believe what a highway nightmare that area still is after all this time. Am flying in and out of Providence in a few weeks because I can't bear to go through the Logan and downtown logjams again.
No. A good short analysis of the Big Dig can be found in
this paper, which is a lot more honest than anything you'll see from the rogues in Boston or Bechtel.
Bottom line: it was 76% complete on 1 October 2001; it is 92% complete today. At that rate, construction will be finished in May 2004. Add time for checkout, troubleshooting, approval and handover - tasks for which no project plan as yet exists, in spite of the urgent recommendations of the National Academies review - and you'll be lucky to see the thing open before mid 2005.
If Tip O'Neill wanted a legacy, couldn't he have just built a Great Pyramid?