11/5/01
The American Prospect
Volume 12, Issue 19.November 5, 2001
Construction: Tunnel Vision
by Harvey Blume
Boston's Big
Dig, officially known as the Central Artery/Tunnel Project, is a massive,
budget-busting effort to reshape the city's traffic infrastructure by the year
2005--without generating any more gridlock than Boston drivers are already
resigned to. The basic idea is to replace the city's eyesore of an elevated
highway with a multilane tunnel fit for twenty-first-century flow. The project
also calls for a web of other tunnels, connectors, and bridges, and the
reallocation of a considerable amount of public land. Its many engineering
achievements--including, for example, four tunnels layered beneath South
Station (a hub for trains, subway cars, and buses)--are well documented on the
Big Dig's Web site, www.bigdig.com. Costs for the undertaking--initially
estimated at $2.6 billion, most of it in federal highway dollars--are today
approaching $14.5 billion, a price tag that makes the Dig far and away the most
expensive urban construction project in American history. Were anything on this
scale attempted in New York City, there would be few places on earth immune to
news of it. Being in Boston, the Dig is less well known than it might be, but
no less spectacular.
The best way to dig the Dig might be to refer back to New
York City's fin de siËcle engineering feat, the Brooklyn Bridge. When completed
in 1883, it was the longest suspension bridge on earth and New York's tallest
structure; its towers, in a city still without skyscrapers, dwarfed everything
in sight. The bridge replaced the ferry system of transport between Brooklyn
and Manhattan, setting the stage for New York City's growth. The Dig, too, has
a unifying function: When the central artery is demolished, Boston's waterfront
and North End will be rejoined to the rest of town after 50 years of separation.
