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Boston Big Dig project
(excerpts)
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It is the most expensive highway construction project in the nation's history […].
Replacing an antiquated, elevated, highway with a l0-lane interstate running below Boston was so ambitious that some likened it to building the Panama Canal. […]
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Not only is the Big Dig a year or more behind schedule, but it also is coming in at more than twice the original $6.4 bilIion budget […]
[…] Lawsuits and contract disputes mushroomed. Engineering obstacles […] slowed [the] project […].
Project officials promised traffic capacity would double, to 225,000 cars a day. […]
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Massachusetts taxpayers and toll-road drivers are bearing the brunt of Big Dig cost increases. […]
Along with the inflated price tag, the time frame stretched, testing the patience of a populace pounded weary by the never-ending presence of the project. […]
[…] Big Dig operating engineer Walter Feugill said he has grown numb to citizen complaints.
"They want it both ways," said Feugill, one of 5,000 Big Dig workers. "They want us to do the job, yet they don't want to be inconvenienced."
[…]
[…] motor vehicles will disappear underground—cruising even beneath the city's subway system—giving way to parks and pedestrians.
"At the end of the day, [Massachusetts Turnpike Chairman] Amorello said, "you can't put a price tag on what will happen to the quaIity of Iife for peopIe and for this city."
(Elizabeth Mehren, Los Angeles Times,
in The Berkshire Eagle Sunday Magazine)
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Judge:
Cosy relationship hindered Big Dig probe
BOSTON (AP)
An investigation of tunnel leaks in the Big Dig highway project was repeatedly hindered by officials of the top contractor and the state agency that manages it, says the retired judge who led the probe.
State officials had too close a relationship with the private contractor, said retired Probate Court Judge Edward M. Ginsburg.
"They were all married to each other," he told The Boston Globe.
Meanwhile, The Boston Herald reported yesterday [that] its own review of public records shows that taxpayers paid to fix construction mistakes costing millions of dollars — money that may never be recovered.
The leak probe was part of a larger investigation overseen by Ginsberg into cost overruns in the Big Dig, which initially was expected to cost about $2.5 billion and wound up costing $14.6 billion. Officials have produced no firm estimate of cost overruns, but state auditor Joseph DeNucci has said his office has documented $600 million in waste.
A report by Ginsburg claims that officials of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority stopped cooperating after Sept. 15, when a large leak flooded an Interstate 93 tunnel and caused a huge traffic jam.
Ginsburg's team soon discovered hundreds of smaller leaks, but Turnpike Authority officiaIs, and officials of design and contruction contractor Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff refused to respond to requests for more up-to-date documentation, he said in the report.
Turnpike Authority spokesman Doug Hanchett denied there was any attempt to withhold information.
"Judge Ginsburg wrote a letter claiming he didn't get some things, and we are remedying that," Hanchett said.
Keith S. Sibley, program manager for Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, also denied that investigators were refused any documents, but said he did recall two letters from Ginsburg complaining about lack of access to records.
"That's the first time I knew they asked for a couple of things, so we furnished them what was in those letters," Sibley said.
Ginsburg was named to head the cost recovery team in January 2003 because a previous team, made up of Big Dig and federal officials, met only sporadically and got back less than $36,000.
Ginsburg has himself been criticized for recovering only about $4 million. The judge says he has filed 10 lawsuits, including one seeking $100 million from Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff.
The Herald said its review of public records found many instances where routine construction jobs were repeatedly botched because of basic errors such as overpouring concrete or paving in near-freezing conditions. Some problems were fixed only after roads crumbled or leaks burst through walls.
(in The Berkshire Eagle, Jan. 26, 2005)
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