Porkbusters take note: The politics of the Big Dig
This AP report provides a basic landscape.
The Big Dig repreents bi-partisan pork politics. Note Massachsuetts’ Big Dig squeezed through the Senate in 1987, when the Senate was controlled by Democrats.
The Brockton Enterprise declares the Big Dig a “monument to greed and politics.”
David Maril of the Enterprise writes:
All the finger-pointing in the world is not going to correct the problems with the Big Dig.
No matter how much both political parties try to dump blame onto Turnpike Authority Chairman Matthew Amorello, the structural flaws are not going to disappear.
No matter how much Mitt Romney tries to exploit the situation, capturing headlines for his long-shot attempt at gaining the Republican Presidential nomination, the mistakes of the past are not going to vanish.
The worst part of all is that 38-year-old Milena Del Valle, a passenger in a car in the wrong place at the wrong time, lost her life because of structural flaws.
This grotesque project, which will the taxpayers even more than the $14.6 billion tab that has already been run up, was a terrible idea from the start. It’s more than years of sloppy planning and careless supervision.
If politicians at the state and federal levels hadn’t been so eager to embrace this gluttonous construction fiasco, Boston would have been much better served.
I encourage you to read the rest of Maril’s essay.
The Boston Herald says Massachusetts voters now regreat The Big Dig. The $14.6 billion project “wasn’t worth the money.”
In the early 1990s my family made several treks to Massachusetts to visit friends. Getting out of Boston Logan Airport was pure torture. It seemed the Big Dig’s traffic tie-ups snarled every route. But the Bostonians told me they’d been promised a mega-marvel. Hey, the Bays were just visiting– but I finally figured out it was easier (and cheaper–via Southwest Airlines) for us to fly to Providence, Rhode Island and rent a car there. The Rhode Island route avoided the downtown Boston traffic–which the Big Dig exacerbated.
Now other folks are avoiding Big Dig routes.
The Hub Politics blog notes that 240 major defects have been identified.
UPDATE: Excellent post and analysis of Big Dig problems at And Still I Persist.
I am amazed at the engineering idiot that thought that hanging that 3000 pound concrete slabs from the ceiling of a tunnel, in a salt air envivonment and a wet environment was the smart thing to do. I am more amazed that it got by all the phases of engineering and installation to become just a gilliotine whating to behead cars and passengers. Perhaps the engineering should be looked at as well as the improper application of epoxy for the entire project.
Comment by brad sears — 7/16/2006 @ 10:32 am
[…] UPDATE (7/16/06): Austin Bay rounds up some more of the Big Crumble coverage. […]
Pingback by And Still I Persist » Blog Archive » The Big Dig Starts to Crumble — 7/16/2006 @ 10:42 am
Mitt Romney’s just been handed a mess. How he handles this could determine how well he does in the 2008 Presidential race.
Comment by Harold C. Hutchison — 7/17/2006 @ 10:02 am