Results tagged “massachusettsturnpike”

In addition to Fannie and Freddie's mortgage meltdown, there are other real estate problems going on in Boston: the Turnpike doesn't has the money to fulfill its duties, and can't take advantage of its real estate, either. The pike has a $100 million budget deficit, and Big Dig payments are coming due, but it doesn't look like it'll be able to take advantage of its prime real estate anytime soon. Theoretically, it should be possible to get big bucks for building above Turnpike property, but poor handling of past real estate decisions and the current market crisis (not to mention the expense of building above ground) are making it tough for officials to take advantage. Instead, they'll be raising tolls to pay the bills. One dime at a time!

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 MetroWest Daily News shed some light on the Turnpike Authority Board yesterday. The following line says it all:

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?"

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 that Amorello will continue to head the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority until August 15 and will be paid for another 6 months. Crude calculations put that at another $116,500 (plus benefits?) to tack on to the cost of the $15 billion project – a small percentage of the cost for tunnels no one can use right now. Amorello takes the most recent hit as scapegoat, but has only headed the MTA and overseen the Big Dig project since 2002 (after it was originally scheduled to be completed.) The ceiling collapse on July 10 has served as a reminder that there are quite a few problems with the Big Dig and the way things operate. We've included today's video with this post – appropriately titled "Big Dig Breakdown." The video presents a view of a van being hoisted onto an MTA rig after breaking down in the tunnel. A tow service which, until watching this video, we didn't realize was gratis.

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 of the anticipated park construction.

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 pushing for Basketball to be made the state sport (and everything else they’ve been a part of making the state this-or-that in past years), we feel it’s about time for the Globe columnists to start picking on someone their own size and leave those kids alone.

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 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. Likewise, deregulation in the airline industry has led to lower fares (and chronic bankruptcy problems, but that's no big deal (unless you're depending on an airline industry pension)). But if the Mass. Pike is private, who's going to compete? Route 9? If drivers are dissatisfied with the price of tolls and the quality of road maintenance, will they start commuting to Nashua instead?

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 to Beacon Hill this past fall and convinced lawmakers that they were completely safe.) Lemley claims he's changed his mind after the recent discovery of leaks throughout the tunnels; adding to that, he says the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority won't allow him to see records and data pertaining to these leaks, and that they don't even have a clue as to what they are going to do to stop them. Of course this has riled up the boys over at the MTA even more; Authority Chairman Matthew Amorello claims he hasn't gotten the letter yet and remains to stand by the idea that the tunnels are safe. What's Beacon's Hill take on all this? Gov. Romney has previously asked for Amorello to step down since all these problems started. Amorello refuses to and here we all go again. One big circus, otherwise known as "The Big Dig."

"The sun is hitting at a more direct angle. It has less of the atmosphere to go through," Simpson said. "It's enough to do its thing - which is melt the snow."

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.