Tunnels? How About an Elevated Highway?

So there's this tunnel in Boston, the problem is that the tunnel is crumbling. So it's time to get a plan. A transit plan that will reshape the way Boston gets from one place to the other. Let's dig a huge system of tunnels build an elevated highway alternative route for Storrow Drive that runs over the Esplanade. The Storrow Drive tunnel has some problems. It's crumbling, it's leaking (back in the 50's they didn't use waterproof cement), and it needs repair before it falls apart altogether. The biggest problem with fixing the Storrow Drive repairs is finding a place for the 100,000+ travellers to go each day. Some ideas have been discussed on how to reroute traffic and create alternate routes while the reconstruction/repairs take place. Rerouting traffic onto the Esplanade was floated as a plan in the initial set of ideas to make the repairs. The idea was dismissed early on due to opposition to the plan. But the plan is back. Yesterday at a community meeting about the repairs the proposal was reintroduced by Gov. Deval Patrick's administration.

According to the numbers from the meeting the diversion onto the Esplanade would allow construction of the new tunnel to be sped up by six months and shave at least $5 million off the project. Of course when the plans for replacement were first discussed back in early May the best estimates were for a project cost of $25 to $200 million. Some specifics were offered at yesterday's meeting – including the fact that the bypass roadway might wipe out about 40 feet of the Esplanade along a 1,000 foot stretch from the Fiedler Footbridge to somewhere between Berkeley and Clarendon Streets. We haven't had good luck with tunnel construction projects here in Massachusetts. Pulling down the elevated highway cost us some $15 billion…and took waaaaay longer than anticipated. There isn't much we can say that we haven't said before so we'll leave this post with the same thought we left the post in May: "the 'Big Dig' may never leave the current vernacular."

Image from Flickr user Paul Keleher">Paul Keleher reminds us that not only are there problems with the Storrow Drive tunnel but September 1 is just around the corner. We all know what that means: a race to the first "Moving Truck Gets Stuck, Again." headline of the college move-in season.