After years of extensive lobbying for federal dollars, a 1987 public works bill appropriating funding for Boston’s Big Dig was passed by U. S. Congress, but it was subsequently vetoed by President Ronald Reagan as being too expensive. When Congress overrode his veto, the project had its green light and ground was first broken in 1991.  The project was declared completed on December 31, 2007, when the partnership between the program manager and the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority ended. The Big Dig cost three times what the Panama Canal cost and was paid for by federal dollars–all Americans paid for it.  I apologize on behalf of the people of Massachusetts–not only were we ripped off, we ripped off the rest of America.

Well, the Big Dig has a new problem.  According to the Boston Herald, Massachusetts transportation officials revealed yesterday that a sinkhole 4 feet deep and up to 190 feet long has created a “void” under the Interstate 90 connector tunnel.  The officials insist that there is no risk of collapse of the tunnel.  (I think I would look for alternate routes.) 

The article reports:

“The gap 9 feet under the tunnel’s roadway, filled with water and resembling a subterranean pond, was caused by an unexpected degree of settling of the clay soil around the tunnel as a result of a pioneering technique called “ground freezing” while contractors dug under the train tracks serving South Station.”  

I would be the first person to say that Boston is cold, but even I am willing to admit that it thaws occasionally. 

The article further reports:

“The state expects to spend at least $15 million to repair the problem by drilling the area and filling it with concrete, once the ground finishes settling by 2014. It already has spent $1.2 million on a new pumping system after a tunnel ramp’s sagging, 345-foot drainage pipe was damaged after sinking 8 feet.

“Eight sets of commuter rail and Amtrak tracks also have had to be repeatedly raised with ballast as the ground below has dropped 8 feet — twice what engineers originally predicted it would sink when they proposed in 2000 to stabilize the ground above the tunnel while they excavated, by freezing it to a depth of 130 feet, DePaola said.”

I have no answers for this.  It does seem to me that someone should be held responsible.  My first concern is the safety of the tunnel and of the commuter rail, but my second reaction is anger at a job done so poorly.  The Big Dig was originally scheduled to be completed in 1998 at an estimated cost of $2.8 billion.  It was completed nine years later at a cost of $22 billion (this includes the $7 billion in interest payments). 

The Big Dig is one of the best arguments I can think of against government highway projects.  I wonder if private contractors could have worked together to do this project–they probably could have done it less expensively and more safely.  Right now, I am convinced that the Big Dig is a $22 billion unsafe boondoggle.