He designed this project so that not one homeowner was displaced. And he said, we want to improve Boston's highway infrastructure, but we do not want to take anybody out of their homes.Īnd that's exactly what he did. The state highway department sent a letter to his elderly grandmother and essentially kicked her out of her home to build one of these elevated highways.Īnd he saw, firsthand, the terrible effects just bulldozing entire neighborhoods, putting these highways right through residential, commercial neighborhoods, scarring these neighborhoods had. And it's very interesting because when he was a very young, he was a student at MIT. He is known as the father of the Big Dig.
Salvucci was the transportation secretary for Massachusetts under Dukakis. And Michael Dukakis was the governor and he appointed a man called - named Fred Salvucci, and Mr. Is it true that Michael Dukakis was one of the architects behind it? In the late '70s, we began planning this operation. People learned the wrong lessons from the Big Dig that we shouldn't do these ambitious projects.įUGELSANG: Well, the elevated highway was first begun in the 1920s. And it really, unfortunately, hasn't been repeated. We are not happy with the infrastructure of the city and we're going to audaciously completely remake that infrastructure, and essentially, make a new downtown Boston.Īnd this was very unusual for this era. And here, we had one of these older urban cities that said, we are not happy with this elevated highway. These cities felt like they were stuck with the infrastructure they had. People weren't thinking big in terms of physical infrastructure anymore, and particularly, in older urban cities - New York, Boston, Philadelphia. People were not afraid to think big and making the physical infrastructure of their cities in the early part of the 20th century.īut by the 1970s when Massachusetts planned or started to thinking of what would become the Big Dig, this was unusual. Boston built its subways a hundred years ago. We built all of New York City subways a hundred years ago. These types of massive complex infrastructure projects were not uncommon in the beginning of the last century.
GELINAS: Well, one of the main reasons why it's such a big deal is that it does seem to belong to a different era. Those issues aside for a second, why is the Big Dig such a big deal? But for a lot of people, the only thing they've heard about this project is how much it cost and how long it took. That's a lot of back story I just gave there. NICOLE GELINAS (Contributing Editor, City Journal): Hi, thank you.įUGELSANG: Thank you. Nicole is a contributing editor to City Journal and she wrote a piece for the autumn issue entitled "Lessons of Boston's Big Dig." So after all these ups and downs, what have we learned? Joining us now in the studio is Nicole Gelinas. It's made easier to get to the airport and it's reconnected the city's downtown with its historic harbor. It's replaced a rusting, decrepit elevated highway that we all know of that slice through Boston for years with a new underground tunnel over 160 miles of underground separate lanes with a grassy park above it. It's cut down pollution, and it's given the city a brand new architectural landmark, the Leonard Zakim Memorial Bunker Hill Bridge. But the Big Dig has also revolutionized one of America's oldest cities. It resulted in charges of fraud, abuse, waste, criminal arrests, the deaths of three workers and a motorist. This infrastructure project was supposed to take about 10 years, took more than 20, supposed to cost about $3 billion, wound up costing more than 16 billion. And in what Bostonians might consider a small miracle, it is finally coming to an end on December 31st. It's been…įUGELSANG: One of the most complex, one of the most expensive construction projects in human history. Oh, I've been intimately acquainted with the Big Dig as many people have. Now, have you ever heard about the Big Dig? That would be the Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel Project, although you may know it by its nickname, the Big Dig.
Well, after decades of work and billions upon billions of dollars, there is something else buried underneath the streets of Boston. Unidentified Man #2: (Singing) Pick it, Davey. THE KINGSTON TRIO: (Singing) He may ride forever 'neath the streets of Boston. Unidentified Man #1: (Singing) He may ride forever. THE KINGSTON TRIO (Group Singer): (Singing) Well, did he ever return, no he never returned.
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