We were in Detroit for the weekend, and the most frequently asked questions about Boston were "What happened in the Super Bowl?" and "Is that Big Dig thing finally finished?" The latter is easier to answer: No. The Globe reports today--months after the official ending--that there are some 2,000 tasks of varying importance that have yet to be completed by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority's contractors. The MTA says that while the Big Dig is functional......

The MetroWest Daily News shed some light on the Turnpike Authority Board yesterday. The following line says it all: Turnpike Authority Board members were surprised to discover yesterday the authority is paying $100,000 a year for two advisory boards. Even though the Turnpike Authority Board claims no knowledge of these advisory boards, they are required by the state Legislature. Newton's mayor is chair of one of the boards and says that the board is an......

Governor Deval Patrick is mulling over an idea that would lease bridges and roads to corporations. Casey Ross at the Herald has the details: If approved, a deal to privatize could mean leasing the Massachusetts Turnpike, Tobin Bridge or Big Dig tunnels to for-profit companies that would pay billions of dollars for the right to collect tolls from motorists for their use. Under such arrangements, the company leasing the road or bridge is responsible for......

We interviewed former gubernatorial candidate, businessman, and man-about-the-state Christy Mihos. Mihos has taken an active role against Cape Wind, the proposal to install wind turbines in Nantucket Sound, and he has offered an alternate proposal to install wind turbines at his chain of convenience stores. We told him up front that we were pro-Cape Wind, but we've run a lot of pro-Cape Wind posts, and we wanted to give him equal time to talk about......

It came from the tales of Troop E. WBZ followed a tip that State Troopers were using one of the ventilation facilities constructed as part of the Big Dig for a driving range. What's news to us is the sheer volume of the ventilation buildings that allow for a third floor with 25 foot ceilings. We knew they were big just looking at their protrusions on the surface, but never knew they were that big.......

The big news in this mornings papers and airwaves was that a report from the Transportation Finance Commission has released a report that pretty much every state transit authority (including the MBTA, DCR, Turnpike Authority, and Highway Department) is in deficit spending and working to just keep up what they've got going. The deficit spending will result in a projected $19 billion deficit over the next 20 years according to the report. That's just for......

Fung Wah accidents are bad news, especially for those riding the bus. But their reliable clumsiness is always a source of humor. Most times, when you hear the words "bus accident" in Massachusetts, someone will invariably ask, "Oh, was it Fung Wah again?" The infamous low-price bus service is so trustworthy in its untrustworthiness that we should probably create a category for it on this site. Today, the Globe reported that a Fung Wah bus......

Breaking news out of the tunnels today is that the inevitable legal action is now official. The family of Milena Del Valle, the Jamaica Plain resident killed when ceiling tiles in the I-90 connector tunnel crushed her in July, are suing in a wrongful death case. The legal action names the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, and eight other companies who worked on the project as responsible for the death of Del Valle. There was......

Matthew Amorello tendered his resignation this morning. Just about an hour before a hearing scheduled to remove Amorello from his post as the MTA Chairman. After the Supreme Judicial Court ruled yesterday that the hearing could go ahead (a ruling against Amorello's assertion that Romney was inventing powers) the negotiations began regarding the terms of the resignation. Before what promises to be a day of press conferences and statements released to the press, we know......

The Big Dig is still making the news and it's supposed to be finished already. Delay after delay we thought we finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel, especially when they officially named the tunnel, but the job is still not done. Today the Big Dig headlines revolved around the millions of gallons of water that are still leaking into the underground roadways. A week ago it was the lagging state......

We know we’ve ragged on Alex Beam before, but it’s good fun every now and again to take issue with columnists – it’s their purpose in print. If everyone agreed with them every time and they weren’t at all controversial they wouldn’t be adding the color we expect from their presence in the papers. But after McGrory searched for some kids to beat at their own game, and today when Beam derides school children for......

Last month, fundraising for the Boston Museum Project reached the $4 million mark, a milestone for them, but still just a fraction of the $70 million projected total cost. The goal of the Boston Museum Project (BMP) is to construct a new museum showcasing Boston’s past, present, and future on parcel 12 of the soon-to-be created Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. Bostonist doesn’t mean to sound overly critical, but our first reaction to seeing the......

Bostonist loves innovative thinking in government, but we know that not every proposed change is a good idea. Take the new study, released yesterday and reliably embraced by the governor, suggesting that it would be a good idea to privatize the Massachusetts Turnpike. "But Bostonist," you protest, "privatization and deregulation create competition, which increases efficiency and drives down costs!" Well, we say, sometimes. In the telecommunications industry, privatization works because, well, competition is possible.......

Well, as if Bostonians haven't gone through enough with this whole Big Dig fiasco, another story has been outed by the Boston Globe today about how I-93 tunnels are now being called unsafe. Jack Lemley, who has been the big engineering honcho specifically dealing with the new tunnels, released a letter on March 9, revealing that he now feels that maybe they aren't that safe after all. (This is the same man who went......

Two weeks ago portions of the Big Dig tunnel had to be shut down as portions of fireproofing material had fallen from the support beams. It was blamed on the already discovered leaks in the tunnel project. Yesterday traffic was reduced to one lane either direction on the Zakim bridge, another wonder of the Big Dig. Just after noon, when the sun was high in the sky, large chunks of ice and snow began to......

Well, we all know about the Big Dig. Lots of constructions, lots of money (14.7 billion dollars to be exact), and lots of complaining. Just when the Mass Turnpike Authority (MTA) was looking at the light at the end of the tunnel, a leak sprung up in their plans, literally. The leak in the I-93 tunnel was only the start to the troubles of the biggest civil project in U.S. history. Since then, investigators......