--The Turnpike Authority is giving you a choice: Bitch about traffic during the day while they do roadwork, or pay up for it if it gets done at night. [WBZ] --If you were feeling icky about horse racing after the gruesome death of Kentucky Derby runner-up Eight Belles, you're not going to like this: Horse manure from Suffolk Downs has been running into a Boston Harbor tributary. [Boston Herald] --The Federal Aviation Administration is......

--People marched yesterday in memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Steven Odom, a 13-year-old who was shot and killed in random gunfire. [Boston Globe] --Michael P. Lewis, former head of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, was fired. He didn't retire. Yet he gets a pension of $72,578 a year. And people wonder why this state is broke? [Boston Globe] --Christopher McCowen, the man convicted for killing fashion writer Christa Worthington in Truro, will not......

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......

Some truck driver decided to make like a college student on move-in day yesterday afternoon. He blithely ignored the height limits on the Big Dig and plowed his way through the I-90 connector. Noah Bierman at the Globe describes the ensuing chaos resulting from the alleged dumbassery: "The trucker had dodged a height restriction, almost, until his load met with the ceiling, causing sparks to fly." While this does not encourage faith in our fellow......

--The Executive Director of the Turnpike Authority wants to CharlieCard everything so that you can use your card at the tolls. While we're all for not having to save spare change, automation might make it easier to miss fare hikes. [Boston Herald] --Massachusetts Bay Community College has been accused of spending money like a drunken sailor. While $450,000 may sound like peanuts in a city whose private schools roll in money, some staff aren't......

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......

Good to know Bostonist isn't the only one who gets nervous driving under the Shaw's in Newton that appears to balance precariously over the Mass Pike. Oh, and through the Prudential Tunnel. And through pretty much any tunnel in this city. The Globe reports today that private businesses are responsible for maintenance of the piece of tunnel that passes under their building. The problem isn't with Shaw's or the private companies. Here's the problem:......

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......

Whew! We're so glad all those officials said that our bridges are safe. What's that? You meant safe to drive ON, not UNDER? Oh!! Silly us, our mistake. Thanks for clearing that up. The Tobin Bridge, Boston Authorities were clued in to a potential problem when Dan French of Londonderry, N.H., said last month a softball sized-chunk of concrete smashed his 25-foot boat's windshield. The debris from the Tobin Bridge has not hit anyone,......

Hate Love?! Oooh, We're all mixed up inside today. HATE! : One year ago TO-DAY, the Mass. Turnpike Authority, a.k.a. The Big Dig, killed a woman. Remember? Milena Del Valle was killed on July 10 2006 as she and her husband drove through the Big Dig's I-90 Connector. The zillion-dollar ceiling panels collapsed, crushing Angel Del Valle's wife beside him before he was able to crawl to safety. Today the National Transportation Safety Board......

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.......

Once you know how to use Storrow getting from your point A to point B becomes so much easier. Well, that is if you're willing to take a chance. The Herald reports this morning that they've reviewed documents and seen evidence of their own that the Storrow Drive Tunnel that runs along the Esplanade is in severe need of repair. It's something the DCR has known for a while; they've been looking into the best......

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......

Seemed like a good political move. Romney and Healey Introduced a proposal in 2006, nary ten years after Republican Governor Bill Weld removed the tolls from the Pike west of the Palmer exit, to remove the tolls west of Weston. The elimination of the tolls on the road was a long standing promise that seemed unlikely to be honored (for a while it seemed unlikely that the far west tolls would be removed, but......

This morning Ramp L, also known as Exit 20, has reopened. Yesterday Mass Turnpike Authority officials opened the carpool lane just north of the ramp, and this morning the ramp was opened to traffic. The ramp, closed since the incident last July, will allow the estimated 22,000 drivers to connect from I-93 N to I-90 E towards Logan. A carpool portion of the eastbound ramp does remain closed for repairs, and is expected to open......

It was big news a couple months back that the Fast Lane transponders were crapping out on drivers. The batteries in the devices were crapping out on the drivers who had gotten them in the first wave. The little tidbit about the Fast Lane we learned in reports following the Fung Wah bus' turnover is that they used the timestamp on the entry and exit to fine the bus company for speeding. As the Globe......

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......

With everything that's gone on with the Big Dig since the project started it isn't surprising that yet another delay was announced by the Turnpike Authority in reopening connector tunnels. They announced that because of engineering flaws in steel brackets that hold up concrete panels aren't actually strong enough to keep them up. Due skepticism was given when it was discovered that the glue holding the bolts in place wasn't doing the trick – but......

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......

Boston awoke this morning to the news we dread, more Big Dig stories. Last night, sometime around 11 pm a large hunk of ceiling in the Turnpike connector tunnel came crashing down when a steel tieback let go. The three ton slab of concrete crushed a car; while the driver was rescued alive the passenger in the vehicle was killed. The stretch of turnpike connector to the Ted Williams Tunnel is closed until at least......

It's easy to forget what's come out of the Big Dig. Literally not figuratively. With all the water that keeps leaking into the tunnels that traverse below Boston's feet the story making headlines is often about taking things out that aren't supposed to be there. But this story all started by taking out the dirt and gravel – and where the Turnpike Authority would put it. Once a dump, Spectacle Island has become the new......

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......

Remember that hubbub a little while ago about the use of substandard concrete in the Big Dig tunnels? That Big Dig scandal was so five minutes ago. Today, it's all about the Rose Kennedy Greenway - the swath of park that will eventually sit atop the crumbling tunnel and brighten all of our lives. Specifically, it's about the memorial to the victims of the Armenian Genocide, which the state legislature said in 2000 should be......

Today's Globe tells us that an executive report to be released today by the Turnpike Authority will tout the benefits of the Big Dig. Foremost among these, according to the Globe, is that the average time it takes to drive through the Central Artery has been reduced by 16 minutes and 42 seconds - from 19:30 to 2:48. The article also casually reminds us that the project has cost $14.9 billion. That got Bostonist to......

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......

While Bostonist is stuck in the office this week with our co-workers on vacation, we’ve noticed that things are not only quiet at work, but in the news arena too. We’ve kept ourselves occupied with this SNL skit floating around the web and now we’re rounding up the latest news stories from the past couple days so you can read them and then keep on eating those leftover holiday chocolates next to the copy machine.......

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......