Time to Throw in the Towel on the Big Dig?

On and on and on goes the ever-worsening saga of the Big Dig, as investigators found more loose ceiling bolts yesterday and can offer no time period for the tunnel closures. We're now into the project for 15 billion dollars, one innocent life, and traffic that is as snarled today as it was before this whole business got started. And, of course, no one knows how long it will take to fix this, or whether it can even be reliably fixed.

Maybe the answer is just to abandon the Big Dig entirely - to chalk it up to experience and move on. Maybe instead, we could construct a giant elevated highway that goes through the heart of the city. That seems like it might work, and it would save us all this wrangling over memorials on the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

Photo: Mass. Pike delays and detours after the ceiling collapse.