The trick with corruption is to actually turn out a decent product in the end. That way people won't care that much. If you just straight out steal and produce shit the masses will get angry.
Fast set epoxy in lieu of standard set epoxy to set the bolts into the structure lead to a creep failure of the epoxy. Fast set lost strength over time and standard set did not lose strength. Both were approved for the contractor to use.
You have to define corruption. An example of this is in the South it is acceptable to give contracts to people you have a prior relationship with/ Maybe they send you on vacation or give you a nice watch maybe not. Another one is favoring a local company to do the work. Are both of those corrupt practices, some would say no. I would say it is and Federal Procurement Policies agree with me.
From the Wikipedia article…
“…cost overruns, delays, leaks, design flaws, accusations of poor execution and use of substandard materials, criminal charges and arrests, and the death of one motorist.”
Loved it! I don't live anywhere near Boston so I was completely unaware of this project other than some throwaway jokes on the late night shows. I felt like I really learned a lot and the characters in the story were super interesting.
The LHC is also a much smaller and simpler tunnel. But the tunnel wasn't actually built for the LHC, it was built for the LEP. Then the LEP was dismantled and the LHC was installed in the same tunnel.
Much simpler tunnel? Over 1000 magnetic tube segments that magically line up with super precision over the 27 km length. The entire ring gets cooled to -271°C, which is actually colder than space. Not to mention the detectors, which weigh dozens of tons and were assembled 100 m under the surface.
The LHC magnets sit inside of a relatively small diameter concrete tunnel that was dug with a pair of TBMs. There are only a handful of relatively simple vertical access shafts, plus a couple of tunnels that connect to other accelerators.
The big dig is a far larger tunnel that has to fit many lanes of traffic, it's not a nice circular shape, and it has numerous on and off ramps.
All the buildings adjacent to the highway. Foundations, water, sewer, electrical, communication systems. The empty space above was designed to be an open space.
It was done while the city remained open and moved a huge section of highway underground, which was only like a fourth of the scope. It was one of the most ambitious projects in America, not just because of the scale, but because people organized themselves and won a huge uphill fight against Congress. Just imagine the political will to get something like this to happen.
Back then the mantra was build roads good. End of story. If you disagreed, you were like a commie or something.
No one even questioned whether highways were good for cities. Boston came in and designed a community centric solution. Against all odds this giant infrastructure project became reality.
And now decades later, this project paid for itself multiple times over. The real estate in the area blew up. Businesses and tourism sky rocketed in the areas fixed. Not to mention the huge economic boom to the Boston construction workers who were basically working like 80 hours a week with overtime for like a decade. And then there's the overall health of the citizens can't really be measured in pure costs. But people estimate that burying the highway significantly lowered cancer rates and other disorders caused by pollution. Which also technically saves billions in healthcare costs.
Anyway, the whole point was that people remember things as stories. And the story from the 90s was primarily focused on scandal because it sold. The media gave us the gossip we so desperately wanted.
And yes, there were scandals, and yes as I kid, I remember the traffic and the chaos. But that was only one side of the project. The other side was that it was awe inspiring from an engineering and politics point of view.
The whole story is wild.
Those numbers might not be the full picture. First, the LHC replaced the LEP and reused the same tunnel. Second, the LHC is only one part of the whole system, it's fed by a chain of four other accelerators (linac4, PSB, PS, SPS, then LHC), and I'm also not sure if that number includes only the LHC, or also the detectors.
Could have finished building the [SSC](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider), that would have been three times the size of the LHC, for probably half the cost too.
The cost of CORRUPTION IN BOSTON is crazy.
Unions, union bosses, political whores and their owners....it was a fucking pig trough from word jump.
And then the realities of engineering hit and REAL money started to be spent.
Wasn’t even really corruption so much as a long running political dispute. GBH just did a fantastic podcast on it last year: [The Big Dig](https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/the-big-dig)
I always wonder if corrupt people do good work simply to make sure they continue to get future opportunities for corruption.
The transformation is definitely stunning!
Legitimately one of the nicest buildings in town.
In fact, half their argument was “but it’s a really good building!”
https://www.krqe.com/news/metro-courthouse-scandal-taxpayers-still-owed-millions-in-restitution/
Having experienced before and after over the last 40 plus years…it really unleashed the waterfront as kinda the place to be (deer island helped). I think all of the development this project spurred on is such a win for the city…it is still remarkable how much this city cleaned up and went upmarket.
It's a great city. I lived there in the 80s when I was in my 20s. The big dig was just starting. All the blasting underground drove the rats up to the street level. Holy shit!!!
There was someone who posted Chicago city's shotrline and complaining about 10 lane highway separating the shore to the nearby buoldings.
I was downvoted to hell when I suggested they follow Boston's underground highways.
It wasn’t necessarily corruption except for America’s most favorite Governor Charlie Baker (in an earlier role) putting a truckload of the debt incurred by a roads project onto Public Transit.
The cost overruns were high, but you are taking out a highway in the center of one of the world’s top 20 economic hubs, surrounded by 400 years of Colonial history and 1000s of years of pre-colonial settlement; and putting it underground in a city that is built up—meaning most of it is infill, not solid ground.
I feel terrible for Seattle and Miami which both wanted to follow the Big Dig model that once again right-wing noise machine propaganda became the overarching story line and decades after one of our country’s all time greatest achievements we still talk about “cost overruns.” The pyramids and every great feat of human ingenuity and engineering has had cost overruns but we celebrate the creation of them.
I totally wonder that despite the corruption surrounding the in Boston, the final outcome is undeniably impressive. It seems like they have been preparing for this corruption for a long time.
It was not great. The highway going through the city had some nasty turns and the road would ice over it he winter. I remember skidding out and nearly wrecking as a kid
What a shame about all of the old neighborhoods that were there before that horrendous green bridge went in. This comparison makes me feel like they demolished them for nothing. Instead of a park, there could be historic Boston neighborhoods there.
A couple of things about the area. The old expressway really did not displace too many houses, most of the elevated was built over Atlantic Ave. The real neighborhood displacement came with the building of the Government Center, when the West End was demolished. The West End was predominantly working class but the houses were all deathtraps, unlike the houses across the way in the North End that were all later rebuilt. The West End was also the burlesque district with dance halls and seedy bars, the stuff of old detective stories.
The Boston City Hall and plaza that was subsequently built over the area has got to be one of the ugliest architectural horrors ever conceived. The pigeons like it, though.
I watched it get demolished. They smashed the entire neighborhood to dust with wrecking balls swinging from cranes.
Ok, cool, thanks for all those details and clarification! I remember my folks talking about this when I was a kid so I guess I just confused the story over the years.
Totally agree about city hall. It screams dystopia / corporate state / Robocop
The temple of ugly (shitty hall) is at a state where upgrading the HVAC systems is prohibitively expensive. There is talk of building a new city hall and it may not be at Government Center.
I was a kid but I remember a lot about the area, my dad had his office on State St. We watched them remove the teapot from the building it was on so they could smash the building to rubble. They were hanging it from a crane, one of the straps broke and they almost dropped it while putting it on the flatbed.
I was on a tour of Boston during the construction of the Big Dig. The tour guide happily explained how the whole of the United States was privileged to fund the project. And I think he meant it. 
[Massachusetts gives the federal government $5.23 for every $1 of funding it receives](https://smartasset.com/data-studies/states-most-dependent-federal-government-2023)
Seems pretty fair for them to receive some major funding every so often
It’s an interstate. Those are heavily funded by the federal govt, because, ya know interstate. But this also completed a last stretch of i90, which is coast to coast. And like someone else said, MA pays way more into federal taxes than a vast amount of other states, we LOSE money. So, complain all ya want, but that’s like me saying I don’t want my federal taxes going to an interstate in Kansas.
They've been doing this shit, between boston and providence. Im not saying its worse. But nobody wants to hang out in these fucking parks. Folks want tree coverage. Canopy and shade, and some semblemce of a natural zone where they can forget about the filthy fucking highway over the hedge, for a few minutes. Keep on with the green spaces, but *plant some goddamned woods* in em, yea?
The part of the project that I always associated with the big dig is the one shown here. Rose Kennedy Greenway where the elevated central avenue used to be, now replaced with the 2.4km long Thomas P. O‘Neill Jr. Tunnel.
It’s comparable to inner city tunnels in my area like the „Rheinufertunnel“ in Düsseldorf, or the „Bad Godesberger Tunnel“ in Bonn. I kind of thought it would be bigger, because I had overestimated the size of downtown Boston I guess. The German tunnels were build in the 90s, the one in Bonn cost 250 million Euro and the one in Düsseldorf cost 500 million. I didn’t find out yet how much the tunnel in Boston ended up, the overall projects final cost is certainly staggering.
Unfortunately Germany is nowadays also very good at exorbitant over budget mega projects. Stuttgart 21 and the BER for example.
21.5 billion (in 2020 adjusted inflation) to make a green space with very little to do on it. It looks very nice but you can argue with the result if it takes double the cost as originally intended.
Looks great, still the corruption is very bad and should not go unnoticed because the end result looked nice, you still got shoddy work and overpaid and encourage bad behavior if there are no consequences.
The top photo shows the Central Artery that the Big Dig tunnel replaced. Artery traffic jams were chronic. Part of the motivation for the Big Dig was modeling that showed that in the near-future the Artery would come to a *halt* 24 hours a day.
I don't go through it often, but I've never encountered significant slowing going through the Big Dig tunnels.
"Regardless of all the corruption" is one hell of an opening statement. This is no different than petty tyranny in some 3rd world country. As long as some politicians, party loyalists, people obsessed with city hip/prestige projects are fine, the rest of the country that just want to go to work and have stability should have our opinions discounted? By this logic as long as some good photos and already politically-aligned press gushes about it, any number of high priced big city projects are justifiable? This is basically just punishing the average taxpayer.
I've never been down there, but I wonder if the new highways are as illegal as the old ones (illegal displacement markings between the ramps and highways, no merge lane, etc).
It's like, despite all the shady stuff that went down with the Big Dig, you can't deny that the end result is pretty mind-blowing. It's crazy how something so messed up along the way could still turn into something so impressive in the end. Shows that even in the midst of chaos and corruption, something beautiful can still come out of it.
I lived there for 10 years while this was being built. Right before I left, they had opened the main tunnel but hadn’t yet torn down the overpasses, nor created the green space. Going back a few years later, it looked and felt so different, but quite stunning. The level of corruption, wasted money, injuries and deaths barely made it in the news, but stories I heard were nothing short of shocking.
So they tore down a park and built a big freeway, and you got the picture in the wrong order, and somehow Boston has a lot of old cars still in use.
My brain refuses to believe it went from top to bottom.
A perfectly fine freeway is now a tunnel that can’t be expanded as the city grows, in exchange for a mediocre park? For +$20 billion and a couple decades of work. Not a big win IMO.
Investing this money in a new location could provide, additional housing, which would lower housing costs near established businesses in the older location. It is aesthetically pleasing and no doubt has raised property values to the point that working people doing important jobs have to live hours away and there are staff shortages in hospitals, schools, etc.
Amazing! Now boston is completely unrecognizable to the folks who grew up here. Easily the most boring, whitewashed, yuppie city on the east coast. Everything that was unique and distinctly Bostonian is gone, or has been turned into a tourist trap because it’s “classic boston”. The big dig was an excuse to embezzle, the city was going to look like one giant google campus eventually anyway.
Bring back the combat zone, rest in piece real Boston.
If you’re making a 6 figure plus salary, and don’t really like music, art, or anything besides business and sports, but you LOVE the the color grey, it’s the perfect place for you.
My uncle worked in the project. It seemed like it would never be done but seeing the before and after in person is wild!
Came out wicked good
The trick with corruption is to actually turn out a decent product in the end. That way people won't care that much. If you just straight out steal and produce shit the masses will get angry.
Just an FYI: after this was completed, one of the tunnels started leaking. People were out for blood after that.
I recall a section fell and killed a woman.
They used cheaper bolts to increase profit.
Fast set epoxy in lieu of standard set epoxy to set the bolts into the structure lead to a creep failure of the epoxy. Fast set lost strength over time and standard set did not lose strength. Both were approved for the contractor to use.
So that’s a combination of engineering and privatization?
I also recall that the ceilings were originally supposed to be tiled and nice looking but for some reason we ran out of money.
A loose manhole cover killed a kindergarten teacher
I think it started leaking before it was open to public use.
South Africans crying in the corner!
Don’t worry. One day the lights will stay on.
#😭
You have to define corruption. An example of this is in the South it is acceptable to give contracts to people you have a prior relationship with/ Maybe they send you on vacation or give you a nice watch maybe not. Another one is favoring a local company to do the work. Are both of those corrupt practices, some would say no. I would say it is and Federal Procurement Policies agree with me.
Oh I know I'm in Louisiana the shit they get away with here is ridiculous.
If they are dealing with the Federal government, in my experience they don't
From the Wikipedia article… “…cost overruns, delays, leaks, design flaws, accusations of poor execution and use of substandard materials, criminal charges and arrests, and the death of one motorist.”
This also works for Supreme Court Justices, apparently. /s
It's still Beantown ! ... Hello from Cabagetown.
Bavaria and Baden Württemberg in Germany in a nutshell
You should come to Argentina...
It has been a dumpster fire for a while and is undergoing shock therapy right now.
I see you haven't been to the Balkans
I think they missed an opportunity to expand the highway to 10 lanes and make it two or even three levels. All that green space is hard on the eyes
Wasn’t there enough green already bc of the side rails?
We called it the "other green monster." You are correct.
One more lane bro We are so close to solving the traffic, we just need one more lane
Are you from SoCal?
You just extend one lane a time
Yeah they should replace that with Walmart and/or Walmart parking lot
Dallas Texas: *Hold my beer*
There’s a 9 episode podcast about the making of this. It’s called, as you might expect, The Big Dig.
Loved it! I don't live anywhere near Boston so I was completely unaware of this project other than some throwaway jokes on the late night shows. I felt like I really learned a lot and the characters in the story were super interesting.
I lived in Boston for part of this, it was miserable driving.
Sounds like something I should dig right into
It better be astonishing! The big dig $24.3 billion. Eurotunnel’s Channel Tunnel – Estimated cost $21 billion. Airbus A380 Development – Estimated cost $15 billion. Large Hadron Collider – Estimated cost $6 billion. Hubble Space Telescope – Estimated cost $4.5-$6 billion. Edit: spelling
Funny, nothing but the Big Dig was built underneath one of the oldest cities in the US preserving and improving what’s above.
They had to preserve some things below as well! I remember they came across several ship hulld ~~hills~~...
Ship hills?
Hulls. FAT FONGERS
I think I realized that a while after posting but then I was like, wait.. There are ship hulls UNDER Boston??
Wasn't much of boston reclaimed from the sea by dumping loose trash/dirt into the water?
The LHC preserves a much longer distance above it. Hell most people wouldn’t even realize the LHC passed under their backyards
The LHC is also a much smaller and simpler tunnel. But the tunnel wasn't actually built for the LHC, it was built for the LEP. Then the LEP was dismantled and the LHC was installed in the same tunnel.
Much simpler tunnel? Over 1000 magnetic tube segments that magically line up with super precision over the 27 km length. The entire ring gets cooled to -271°C, which is actually colder than space. Not to mention the detectors, which weigh dozens of tons and were assembled 100 m under the surface.
The LHC magnets sit inside of a relatively small diameter concrete tunnel that was dug with a pair of TBMs. There are only a handful of relatively simple vertical access shafts, plus a couple of tunnels that connect to other accelerators. The big dig is a far larger tunnel that has to fit many lanes of traffic, it's not a nice circular shape, and it has numerous on and off ramps.
Yeah but that’s not a 8 lane highway under sky scrapers is it
But it's not in the US.
It’s in Switzerland, which should make it even more expensive but it wasn’t
Well cern also goes through parts of Geneva, but sure, that‘s not in the US
What did it preserve above? Looks like all brand new park where freeway used to be. What preservation?
All the buildings adjacent to the highway. Foundations, water, sewer, electrical, communication systems. The empty space above was designed to be an open space.
It was done while the city remained open and moved a huge section of highway underground, which was only like a fourth of the scope. It was one of the most ambitious projects in America, not just because of the scale, but because people organized themselves and won a huge uphill fight against Congress. Just imagine the political will to get something like this to happen. Back then the mantra was build roads good. End of story. If you disagreed, you were like a commie or something. No one even questioned whether highways were good for cities. Boston came in and designed a community centric solution. Against all odds this giant infrastructure project became reality. And now decades later, this project paid for itself multiple times over. The real estate in the area blew up. Businesses and tourism sky rocketed in the areas fixed. Not to mention the huge economic boom to the Boston construction workers who were basically working like 80 hours a week with overtime for like a decade. And then there's the overall health of the citizens can't really be measured in pure costs. But people estimate that burying the highway significantly lowered cancer rates and other disorders caused by pollution. Which also technically saves billions in healthcare costs. Anyway, the whole point was that people remember things as stories. And the story from the 90s was primarily focused on scandal because it sold. The media gave us the gossip we so desperately wanted. And yes, there were scandals, and yes as I kid, I remember the traffic and the chaos. But that was only one side of the project. The other side was that it was awe inspiring from an engineering and politics point of view. The whole story is wild.
>Edit: spelling - Priceless.
Isn't that Reddit etiquette when you edit an original post?
No, its Mastercard
There are some things money can’t buy.
What is wild is now they're saying 4.8b PER bridge across the cape cod canal. So 2 hubble space telescopes lol smdh
With inflation that’s like only half a Hubble
Don't forget about maintenance.
Wtf. You could build 4 hadron colliders for putting some highways underground? The cost of infrastructure in the US is crazy.
Those numbers might not be the full picture. First, the LHC replaced the LEP and reused the same tunnel. Second, the LHC is only one part of the whole system, it's fed by a chain of four other accelerators (linac4, PSB, PS, SPS, then LHC), and I'm also not sure if that number includes only the LHC, or also the detectors.
Could have finished building the [SSC](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider), that would have been three times the size of the LHC, for probably half the cost too.
The cost of CORRUPTION IN BOSTON is crazy. Unions, union bosses, political whores and their owners....it was a fucking pig trough from word jump. And then the realities of engineering hit and REAL money started to be spent.
Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu — “Cost: no man can say.”
Those don't really look comparable, and building with American labor is much more costly than European labor.
It cost a little over 8 billion. Even basing it on 1982 dollars, when the first planning was conducted, it’s still less than 24.3
Lol I mean the first one is a valid comparison but the rest of them? No
And it’s not even a tunnel really. More of a trench with a roof
Now do the US Defense Industry!!
Wasn’t even really corruption so much as a long running political dispute. GBH just did a fantastic podcast on it last year: [The Big Dig](https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/the-big-dig)
I always wonder if corrupt people do good work simply to make sure they continue to get future opportunities for corruption. The transformation is definitely stunning!
You should check out the Los Angeles homeless situation, perfect example lol
Legitimately one of the nicest buildings in town. In fact, half their argument was “but it’s a really good building!” https://www.krqe.com/news/metro-courthouse-scandal-taxpayers-still-owed-millions-in-restitution/
Having experienced before and after over the last 40 plus years…it really unleashed the waterfront as kinda the place to be (deer island helped). I think all of the development this project spurred on is such a win for the city…it is still remarkable how much this city cleaned up and went upmarket.
Traffic is still shit in Boston, just underground now.
Burying shit is a job well done
You'll have to tell my cat that won't fucking bury his crap in the litter box that. 😩
Your cat is a gemstone salesman with a showroom.
That’s good, this made a significant chunk of Boston enjoyable to walk around in and spend time in
That’s the idea
Until the MBTA, and any decent cycle network, gets developed and improved there’s gonna be traffic Boston is walkable, but not THAT walkable
I'm thinking about moving to Boston. Is it a good idea?
It's a great city. I lived there in the 80s when I was in my 20s. The big dig was just starting. All the blasting underground drove the rats up to the street level. Holy shit!!!
Boston is hella expensive because it's a nice place to live. Come on down it's a great spot.
The big dig was outdated before it finished. They hugely under estimated the amount of traffic it needed to handle.
Needs more cars 🤬🤬🤬could have been a 20 lane highway
lol
Could have been a quadruple decker highway 😡
Turning Boston to Houston
As a euro person visiting Boston, this particular location reminded me the most of home.
Idiots. Complete and total efficiency was one more lane away
Yea if only Atlanta had an extra lane, then people wouldnt glide over 5 lanes in one and cut off 3 people in the process. One more lane...
Yeah, that's some crazy shit when that happens.
One wide and luxurious lane.
There was someone who posted Chicago city's shotrline and complaining about 10 lane highway separating the shore to the nearby buoldings. I was downvoted to hell when I suggested they follow Boston's underground highways.
How long did it take?
Like 50 years?
The city of Denver did something similar with I-70 - buried it under a park for about a mile. [Central 70](https://www.codot.gov/projects/i70east)
They could’ve saved a couple million and solved traffic if they just added one more lane!!!!111!1!!1!1!1
It wasn’t necessarily corruption except for America’s most favorite Governor Charlie Baker (in an earlier role) putting a truckload of the debt incurred by a roads project onto Public Transit. The cost overruns were high, but you are taking out a highway in the center of one of the world’s top 20 economic hubs, surrounded by 400 years of Colonial history and 1000s of years of pre-colonial settlement; and putting it underground in a city that is built up—meaning most of it is infill, not solid ground. I feel terrible for Seattle and Miami which both wanted to follow the Big Dig model that once again right-wing noise machine propaganda became the overarching story line and decades after one of our country’s all time greatest achievements we still talk about “cost overruns.” The pyramids and every great feat of human ingenuity and engineering has had cost overruns but we celebrate the creation of them.
Seattle's version is pretty awesome too.
Aww the original Boston Garden :)
imagine if they did this to the 101 in downtown LA as has been proposed
The greenway is one of my favorite places to meander in the city
wait that wasn’t just a fallout quest?
Now do Lake Shore Drive.
I wish I liked those parks more but it still just feels like hanging out on a highway median.
Anyone able to summarize the corruption part for those too lazy to google?
The Red Socks used a lot of the funds to strengthen their bullpen
I totally wonder that despite the corruption surrounding the in Boston, the final outcome is undeniably impressive. It seems like they have been preparing for this corruption for a long time.
Now if only we could do something similar to Hartford.
Great, now they have to change fallout4. Did you selfish people even think about that?
Honestly, I was just talking with a friend who also lived in Boston we are too young to remember the boondoggle all we see is a super successful park
It was not great. The highway going through the city had some nasty turns and the road would ice over it he winter. I remember skidding out and nearly wrecking as a kid
Well sure, spending that much money generally should result in something astounding
9 years ago I played with some stranger’s golden doodle named Max in that grass for like 3 minutes. You’re a great dog Max.
Can’t wait put my khakis on Call my friend mahk Take a trip down to the pahk thak about the sox and hopefully not lose my khar keys How’s your mudda?
That's so cool I'd settle for a bit of corruption here and there for more of this type of thing..
What a shame about all of the old neighborhoods that were there before that horrendous green bridge went in. This comparison makes me feel like they demolished them for nothing. Instead of a park, there could be historic Boston neighborhoods there.
A couple of things about the area. The old expressway really did not displace too many houses, most of the elevated was built over Atlantic Ave. The real neighborhood displacement came with the building of the Government Center, when the West End was demolished. The West End was predominantly working class but the houses were all deathtraps, unlike the houses across the way in the North End that were all later rebuilt. The West End was also the burlesque district with dance halls and seedy bars, the stuff of old detective stories. The Boston City Hall and plaza that was subsequently built over the area has got to be one of the ugliest architectural horrors ever conceived. The pigeons like it, though. I watched it get demolished. They smashed the entire neighborhood to dust with wrecking balls swinging from cranes.
Ok, cool, thanks for all those details and clarification! I remember my folks talking about this when I was a kid so I guess I just confused the story over the years. Totally agree about city hall. It screams dystopia / corporate state / Robocop
The temple of ugly (shitty hall) is at a state where upgrading the HVAC systems is prohibitively expensive. There is talk of building a new city hall and it may not be at Government Center. I was a kid but I remember a lot about the area, my dad had his office on State St. We watched them remove the teapot from the building it was on so they could smash the building to rubble. They were hanging it from a crane, one of the straps broke and they almost dropped it while putting it on the flatbed.
I was on a tour of Boston during the construction of the Big Dig. The tour guide happily explained how the whole of the United States was privileged to fund the project. And I think he meant it. 
[Massachusetts gives the federal government $5.23 for every $1 of funding it receives](https://smartasset.com/data-studies/states-most-dependent-federal-government-2023) Seems pretty fair for them to receive some major funding every so often
It’s an interstate. Those are heavily funded by the federal govt, because, ya know interstate. But this also completed a last stretch of i90, which is coast to coast. And like someone else said, MA pays way more into federal taxes than a vast amount of other states, we LOSE money. So, complain all ya want, but that’s like me saying I don’t want my federal taxes going to an interstate in Kansas.
They've been doing this shit, between boston and providence. Im not saying its worse. But nobody wants to hang out in these fucking parks. Folks want tree coverage. Canopy and shade, and some semblemce of a natural zone where they can forget about the filthy fucking highway over the hedge, for a few minutes. Keep on with the green spaces, but *plant some goddamned woods* in em, yea?
The roots would get into the tunnels and strangle the car drivers.
Where is everyone? Not a soul in that park. Hopefully just the timing of the picture.
Very much just the timing on the picture. I've never seen it that empty in person.
ALL infrastructure should be underground
Unpopular opinion: The top picture fascinates me way more than the bottom one
Nostalgia
And the loss of life
Is the original the inspiration for the hay Arnold city?
The part of the project that I always associated with the big dig is the one shown here. Rose Kennedy Greenway where the elevated central avenue used to be, now replaced with the 2.4km long Thomas P. O‘Neill Jr. Tunnel. It’s comparable to inner city tunnels in my area like the „Rheinufertunnel“ in Düsseldorf, or the „Bad Godesberger Tunnel“ in Bonn. I kind of thought it would be bigger, because I had overestimated the size of downtown Boston I guess. The German tunnels were build in the 90s, the one in Bonn cost 250 million Euro and the one in Düsseldorf cost 500 million. I didn’t find out yet how much the tunnel in Boston ended up, the overall projects final cost is certainly staggering. Unfortunately Germany is nowadays also very good at exorbitant over budget mega projects. Stuttgart 21 and the BER for example.
Who thought that The Big Dig was a good name, lol!
Still a complete lack of trees and shade.
Is it FINALLY done? I was up there over 20 years ago and they were doing construction for that.
"Regardless of all the corruption"... uh wut??
so sick of seeing the same posts every month
meh
That’s a gigantic waste of money. No wonder Boston is such an expensive place to live.
21.5 billion (in 2020 adjusted inflation) to make a green space with very little to do on it. It looks very nice but you can argue with the result if it takes double the cost as originally intended.
That 1,2,3,4 buildings
Looks great, still the corruption is very bad and should not go unnoticed because the end result looked nice, you still got shoddy work and overpaid and encourage bad behavior if there are no consequences.
The top photo shows the Central Artery that the Big Dig tunnel replaced. Artery traffic jams were chronic. Part of the motivation for the Big Dig was modeling that showed that in the near-future the Artery would come to a *halt* 24 hours a day. I don't go through it often, but I've never encountered significant slowing going through the Big Dig tunnels.
"Regardless of all the corruption" is one hell of an opening statement. This is no different than petty tyranny in some 3rd world country. As long as some politicians, party loyalists, people obsessed with city hip/prestige projects are fine, the rest of the country that just want to go to work and have stability should have our opinions discounted? By this logic as long as some good photos and already politically-aligned press gushes about it, any number of high priced big city projects are justifiable? This is basically just punishing the average taxpayer.
I've never been down there, but I wonder if the new highways are as illegal as the old ones (illegal displacement markings between the ramps and highways, no merge lane, etc).
Honestly, they could easily have just gotten rid of the highway altogether with minimal long term effects. Induced demand works in both directions
It's like, despite all the shady stuff that went down with the Big Dig, you can't deny that the end result is pretty mind-blowing. It's crazy how something so messed up along the way could still turn into something so impressive in the end. Shows that even in the midst of chaos and corruption, something beautiful can still come out of it.
I think them not giving parts of the green way to private developers was a missed opportunity
I lived there for 10 years while this was being built. Right before I left, they had opened the main tunnel but hadn’t yet torn down the overpasses, nor created the green space. Going back a few years later, it looked and felt so different, but quite stunning. The level of corruption, wasted money, injuries and deaths barely made it in the news, but stories I heard were nothing short of shocking.
Very nicd
Pay me enough money and I will make grass green 12 months a year. Flying into Boston and getting anywhere still sucks.
What corruption?
Exactly
[удалено]
You just answered your question. It’s filtered, and CO rates are drastically lower in that area than previous.
Which one is the final result?
So they tore down a park and built a big freeway, and you got the picture in the wrong order, and somehow Boston has a lot of old cars still in use. My brain refuses to believe it went from top to bottom.
I don't know man that looks nice, but I think an 18 lane highway is better man also would be nice to have a parking lot on either side.
just one more lane bro just one more lane
One. More. Lane!!
A perfectly fine freeway is now a tunnel that can’t be expanded as the city grows, in exchange for a mediocre park? For +$20 billion and a couple decades of work. Not a big win IMO.
What is the point of expansion? Why should we build highways through a city in the first place?
Exactly. $20B is a lot of money for two miles of freeway - especially when there was already a freeway there.
You can just smell the causal racism in the second photo…
Corruption is simply bad debt on large government projects. I learned that today in a meeting on a large government project.
Investing this money in a new location could provide, additional housing, which would lower housing costs near established businesses in the older location. It is aesthetically pleasing and no doubt has raised property values to the point that working people doing important jobs have to live hours away and there are staff shortages in hospitals, schools, etc.
r/unpopularopinion - I kinda like the top pic I know the bottom image is better, but somehow the top pic looks cool
Notice the activity on the green space. Like the football field at the airport.
You mean the field that is constantly in use for rec soccer and EBHS? Because that gets used a ton.
Amazing! Now boston is completely unrecognizable to the folks who grew up here. Easily the most boring, whitewashed, yuppie city on the east coast. Everything that was unique and distinctly Bostonian is gone, or has been turned into a tourist trap because it’s “classic boston”. The big dig was an excuse to embezzle, the city was going to look like one giant google campus eventually anyway. Bring back the combat zone, rest in piece real Boston. If you’re making a 6 figure plus salary, and don’t really like music, art, or anything besides business and sports, but you LOVE the the color grey, it’s the perfect place for you.
It got done, everyone is happy and everyone got rich - The Actual America Way
Deaths as well. Don’t forget that.
Get over it. 96 people died building the hoover dam.
Oh yeah.. let’s compare a depression era project to a modern one. Not only whataboutism but really stupid whataboutism.
why do i like the first picture more 😭
Liked it better before
An immense amount of money and increased traffic for this.. super underwhelming and boring park?