BOSTON – What do you call a construction project that overruns its initial cost estimates by a factor of seven, and whose construction is plagued by water leaks, and allegations that the concrete contractors provided materials that weren’t up to scratch?
“It’s a vast improvement over what was there before . . . Many in the business community and the residents feel that . . . downtown Boston has finally reconnected with the waterfront,” says Steve Anderson, a self-described highways and tunnels enthusiast based in New York, who runs a ring of websites that chart the history and road conditions of interstate highways in 16 U.S. states, as well as the province of Quebec.
Bostonians dubbed the project in question “the Big Dig.” Its point was to bury the ground-level Interstate 93 that coursed through the heart of Boston, tearing its north and south asunder-and to add a tunnel beneath Boston harbour leading to Logan Airport on the other shore. The final piece of the project opened in January.
The Big Dig took took 12 years to complete, at a US$14.6 billion pricetag, which made it the single most expensive highway project in American history. It was a pharaonic undertaking: half a million truckloads of dirt were carted away. Digging through downtown Boston, much of it landfill that was formerly Boston harbour, required the rerouting of power and utility lines up to a century old, and even turned up a number of sunken ships.
With talk of burying the Gardiner Expressway perennially in the air, what can Toronto learn from Boston’s boondoggle turned boon?
“It certainly needs to be kept front-of-mind,” says Anderson, to sell the idea to the public. Funding could come through a private-public partnership involving tolls, he says. “I think that would be the quickest most stable way to get something done without having to rely on public and bond financing for a number of years.”
Fans of extreme engineering projects have to take the long view, though: the Big Dig was conceived in 1972; planning started in 1982, and funding was approved in 1987, when costs were estimated at just US$2 billion. Given that the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation, an organization set up to “lead waterfront renewal” was launched only in 2002, Toronto’s own Big Dig may not be done before 2036.
