I had visited Boston quite a while ago and have limited memory of the occasion beyond the joy of finding, before computers had really taken hold, a museum of computers at the harbour, in a part of town quite distinct from the commercial centre by dint of the highway lifted over the streets. The highway was one of those high columned structures that the Americans are so good at, massive, bedecked with bolts and rivets, rusting, dripping, noisy, full of the rush and the strength and the ambition of that burgeoning country throughout the twentieth century. Only last year I was enjoying the El which rings and radiates from central Chicago, a skeletal framework that continues to contain the industry of the street, and without which the city would be that much poorer, that much more ordinary. Of course, these structures aren’t everybody’s cup of tea, and removing them, thrown overboard perhaps, had been a Bostonian ambition not long after they were installed and shortly after they became so popular and snarled up.
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Their removal was, in the expected American way, an exercise of even greater magnitude than their installation. The Big Dig was an extraordinary task, a feat of finance, engineering and management the like of which had not before been attempted. The removal was of course not that simple, for the purpose was not only to remove the edifice, but to also resolve the traffic, a traffic that had since increased manyfold and that had to continue to flow while being sent elsewhere. Digging a tunnel through landfill, along the same corridor as the structure, to cater for more traffic than the width of the structure allowed, was challenging enough. Linking it into the wider network, extending the network under the river to the airport and over the river to the north were considered additional necessities that had to be constructed and connected largely in parallel.
For a well-informed discussion on the project this is a link to Nicole Gelinas’ excellent 2007 piece, which is well worth a read, if only to assuage the guilt of those of us that have worked with similar project teams since. More recent articles can also be Googled which indicate that all the benefits seen in 2007 may not have been permanent, and from which can be learnt the successes that impressed the engineering world, and the failures that funded the Massachusetts lawyers for years thereafter.
Of course, these untried and untested projects are bound to run less than smoothly, rarely to the original tongue in cheek budget or the wishful pseudo-scientific claims of future economic benefit. Some of the errors are almost predictable, and some are quite extraordinary to those of us that enjoy hindsight (or a modicum of engineering knowledge). It is not for me to judge, just perhaps to occasionally raise eyes to the ceiling or hands to head as we continue to repeat what has gone before.
For a well-informed discussion on the project this is a link to Nicole Gelinas’ excellent 2007 piece, which is well worth a read, if only to assuage the guilt of those of us that have worked with similar project teams since. More recent articles can also be Googled which indicate that all the benefits seen in 2007 may not have been permanent, and from which can be learnt the successes that impressed the engineering world, and the failures that funded the Massachusetts lawyers for years thereafter.
Of course, these untried and untested projects are bound to run less than smoothly, rarely to the original tongue in cheek budget or the wishful pseudo-scientific claims of future economic benefit. Some of the errors are almost predictable, and some are quite extraordinary to those of us that enjoy hindsight (or a modicum of engineering knowledge). It is not for me to judge, just perhaps to occasionally raise eyes to the ceiling or hands to head as we continue to repeat what has gone before.
I get back to the UK to read with faint amusement the most recent predicted results of HS2, a project that offered shortened journeys that will now no longer be delivered, a capacity that will now no longer be between the destinations that were promised, for a sum far in excess of its original budget.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
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What interested me in visiting Boston again was whether the Big Dig, despite all its difficulties and overruns, had achieved its primary aims - reducing traffic congestion (and so benefit the city’s economy) and reconnecting the city with its waterfront (and so benefit the city’s economy).
The first was not immediately evident as I crawled through the system from the airport to my hotel. A combination of increased capacity and the expansion of the interconnected road network means that when it does snarl up the impact is more widely felt, a far greater number of people are inconvenienced, all while sitting in tunnels full of diesel fumes. If congestion is measured by the number of times the road network locks solid it may well be a success, but if you measure it in time lost - the cost equation that fortified the business case – the far greater number of people now trapped suggests that the success may not be that substantial.
The first was not immediately evident as I crawled through the system from the airport to my hotel. A combination of increased capacity and the expansion of the interconnected road network means that when it does snarl up the impact is more widely felt, a far greater number of people are inconvenienced, all while sitting in tunnels full of diesel fumes. If congestion is measured by the number of times the road network locks solid it may well be a success, but if you measure it in time lost - the cost equation that fortified the business case – the far greater number of people now trapped suggests that the success may not be that substantial.
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The second benefit, the connection of the city to its waterfront, is equally dubious, not because the corridor through which the traffic passes is not much improved in the Google view, but because from street level the improvement isn’t nearly as good as it could be. Here the experience is a little different to the green swathe seen on Google, with multiple lanes of traffic wrapping, separating and cutting through the new green islands, making for an isolated but not unpleasant experience - once you are on them.
Whether you press on to the waterfront is a moot point. There is little space and public ownership along the waterfront to develop the area's character and, because it also continues to be bounded by a three lane road, not a great deal has changed. I am reminded of the work in London’s Elephant & Castle and Old Street, where even the rather peculiar principle of connecting one side of a roundabout to its edge brings substantial benefit to the roundabout, its adjacent spaces and the pedestrian experience. With a little less car-centric thinking, connecting Boston's green islands to the waterfront in the same manner would certainly provide a renewed purpose to go there and help to deliver the aim of reuniting it with the city.
Whether you press on to the waterfront is a moot point. There is little space and public ownership along the waterfront to develop the area's character and, because it also continues to be bounded by a three lane road, not a great deal has changed. I am reminded of the work in London’s Elephant & Castle and Old Street, where even the rather peculiar principle of connecting one side of a roundabout to its edge brings substantial benefit to the roundabout, its adjacent spaces and the pedestrian experience. With a little less car-centric thinking, connecting Boston's green islands to the waterfront in the same manner would certainly provide a renewed purpose to go there and help to deliver the aim of reuniting it with the city.
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It strikes me that in formulating the Big Dig project, the boldness of the civil engineers and contractors was not matched by that of the urban planners and traffic engineers. No attempt appears to have been made to dissuade traffic, either in the tunnels or on the surface, but just to make an even greater number of cars flow more easily.
In an interesting prioritisation, and one that wasn’t unfamiliar elsewhere in the 1970’s, the Big Dig secondarily included a few projects to extend the public transport network, most of which were built, occasionally begrudgingly. Boston’s public transport system is the third oldest in the world and while it is clean, easy to navigate and reasonably cheap, it remains underfunded, less than reliable, devoid of interoperability, and at most times fairly empty. With no meaningful attempt to encourage people out of their cars by removing inner city vehicle capacity, these isolated improvements seem to have had little impact.
I would be intrigued to know (or be appointed to develop :-) the scheme that reversed the priorities and spent a more substantial proportion of the Big Dig’s $15 billion on improving the public transport system, replacing the highway structures with equal or less capacity, and designing the resulting space with greater consideration for Bostonians when outside of their cars.
In an interesting prioritisation, and one that wasn’t unfamiliar elsewhere in the 1970’s, the Big Dig secondarily included a few projects to extend the public transport network, most of which were built, occasionally begrudgingly. Boston’s public transport system is the third oldest in the world and while it is clean, easy to navigate and reasonably cheap, it remains underfunded, less than reliable, devoid of interoperability, and at most times fairly empty. With no meaningful attempt to encourage people out of their cars by removing inner city vehicle capacity, these isolated improvements seem to have had little impact.
I would be intrigued to know (or be appointed to develop :-) the scheme that reversed the priorities and spent a more substantial proportion of the Big Dig’s $15 billion on improving the public transport system, replacing the highway structures with equal or less capacity, and designing the resulting space with greater consideration for Bostonians when outside of their cars.