BOSTON U/G Tip's Tunnels to Toll?

BOSTON U/G

Tip's Tunnels to Toll?

The Central Artery/Tunnel (CA/T) in Boston is probably America's largest single road work under way. Tip's Tunnels, it deserves to be named since the work has its origin in energetic workings of the federal purse strings on behalf of his hometown constituency by then US House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, just before his retirement in 1987. Approximately half finished the CA/T is said by the Massachusetts Highway Department to be costing $7.8 billion while the federal government says it is likely to cost over $11b.

Therein lies the possibility that the toll aspects could be extended (the underwater tunnels are already tolled but not the underground). A federal General Accounting Office report last year came as close as that watchdog agency ever comes to telling the President he should cut off federal funding for the CA/T. GAO accused the state of fiddling its figures by excluding "over $1 billion in costs that were included in previous estimates" ignoring inflation, failing to provide for contingencies, assuming aggressive cost containment without having measures to achieve that, etc

Difficult: The project is a massive exercise in the most difficult kind of construction work, threading 4 to 10-lane highway in, over, through and under subways, sewers, watermains, telephone and electric cables and near the foundations of center city buildings, much of it underneath the 6-lane elevated JFK that it is eventually to replace, all in a filled swamp, with mandates not to disrupt any activity along the way. The western side of the Y-plan, the Central Artery (I-93) part is a replacement of a 30 year old surface and elevated 6-lane expressway with an 8 to 10-lane underground and surface highway connecting at the northern end to a large new cable-stayed bridge over the Charles River. The eastern leg is a new link between north-south I-93 and the east-west Mass Turnpike (I-90) and Boston's main airport (Logan) via a third tunnel called the Ted Williams after a local sportsman — 2 tubes of 2 lanes each under Boston Harbor. That part, opened last year to commercial vehicles only is already a toll facility. It uses an MFS/TI e-toll system operated by the Mass Turnpike.

65 lane-kms tunnel: Involved in the whole CA/T project are about 160 lane-km of roadway, and six new interchanges, about half of the works underground. There are 30km of tunnel roadway, 65 lane-km, some immersed tube, some jacked tube, other regular cut-form-pour-&-cover. The project has strong support in a city hypersensitive to history, the environment and all things politically correct, because it will remove 200,000 vehicles a day and rid them of an ugly overwhelmed overhead expressway and thereby get that automotive stuff out of sight and hearing. It is seen as a key to the restoration and beautification of a major slab of the center city. CA/T has a website (www.state.ma.us/bigdig) which has terrific maps and construction sketches but a movie that is awfully slow. (Contact 617 951 6013)