Ten years later, did Boston's Big Dig deliver?

I see it as flushing away a huge amount of technical debt that we had incurred over the last 100 years, hopefully setting us up for modernization on many fronts - which is quite a big deal when you consider it's competing to be a top tech hub.

I had the pleasure of returning to the city in 2015 for a brief bit of work with my current company and was utterly blown away at the transformation of the boulevard, the green spaces, the visual beauty...and just the sense of openness and lightness. I felt like I could breath easier just walking down the street.

It's a shame to have had to overpaid so dearly for that, but what an amazing result. It was a great city before, but this just felt next-level.

For point of comparison, the population of Boston is around 700k, and the per capita income is 33k. That's... $23 billion.

I support infrastructure projects, and at this point think we should consider the Big Dig a learning experience and not a political punching bag. But can we really say it's a success, considering the countless other uses of the money that we had to pass on?

The new underground freeway is a waste. Twenty billion dollars were buried for a road that does little for outer suburb traffic and nothing at all for Boston. The best thing would have been to knock down the Central Artery and replace it with nothing at all.

Or we could have had a North Station-South Station connector. You could have that as a cheap cut-and-cover subway for 1% the price of the Dig. You could find a way to demolish the new City Hall along the way; that hideous thing has to go. It would be a bit slow and have a turn or two at that price but would be fantastic for transit service.

For what it's worth, the slurry walls constructed for the Big Dig tunnels were built to also accommate the North/South rail link if the state ever decides to fund it. That said the link is such a complex undertaking, I sincerely doubt it will happen in our lifetimes.

For people west of town, it's a great convenience to park or be dropped at Alewife station, ride the Red Line to South Station, then the Silver Line to the airport. This is versus the old system where you had to change twice. We're thankful for small things.

And yes, the lengthy stop to change over from electric to diesel is logical yet seems poorly implemented. Many times I've watched the driver climb out to manually operate the electrodes. Surely it's possible to better automate this process, given that people headed toward the airport are usually in a huge hurry?

Maybe eventually they can just make the Silver Line buses completely electrical; batteries propel them above ground, the third rail propels them and recharges them underground, perhaps with hybrid-diesel supplemental power.

A city with good public and private transit will see continuous growth. A city that does not invest in it, maintain it, or fix it will suffocate itself.

Thats not to say you should write blank checks or do impossible feats of engineering, but if you want to live somewhere that has a bright future rather than one that remains stagnant, you don't want to see your transit systems fall behind.

Prior to the Big Dig, Massachusetts had funded all of its interstate highways entirely with its own money while still sending it's share of gas tax money to the Feds. The CA/T project wasn't so much appropriating other people's money as much as getting back what it donate to other states to build their highways.

mass-transit-crippling debt

This is a valid point, but something needed to be done about the elevated artery and tearing it down and replacing it with light rail/commuter rail isn't a practical solution - if nothing else, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island would have been up in arms. If anything, blame the car-focused planning of the 1940s and 1950s for creating the mess in the first place.

This is a project that has and will continue to provided many tangible, measurable benefits to millions of people for decades.

I mean Alaska is in a harsh environment. Why should I fund their infrastructure projects? But I gladly do so knowing the rewards are greater - having a strong and prosperous union.

That's the point. Of course there's always the issues of cost overruns, corruption, etc.

A freeway lane carries around 2400 passengers/hour, a light rail line can carry around 20,000 passengers/hour. Heavy or commuter rail can carry around 40,000 passengers/hour.

And a rail lane has 50 times the passenger capacity of a private motor vehicle lane.

So if the problem is linking people to sfo, rail is much cheaper.

You need to get the link to rail at both ends right. Maybe you need baggage check and parking available in Marin county where you get on the train.

It sounds crazy, but much easier than digging through the city (and going above ground is a non-starter).

BART did this at reasonable cost (less than $2b in today's dollars) from SF to OAK in just four years with the Transbay tube. So it's very doable and would solve massive traffic issues in SF.

Pretty sure a while back there was an extension project that just got canned - don't remember the reason, but if you look at the satellite view it looks like both 280 and 101 were interrupted in the middle of construction.

As another poster mentioned, completing the 280-80/101 link in SOMA also has a high payoff. They're separated by less than three blocks - even a single lane tunnel in each direction would take a big load off SOMA streets. (Instead the current mayor wants to demolish the nortnern two miles of the 280, which is insanity)

What you describe was almost complete in SF in the 1960s and it was stopped by mass citizen opposition. It was a complete disaster for the city and quality of life.

Then in the 1990s the remaining stubs -- except 280 -- were mostly removed so it could never happen again. The city is more beautiful and live able now than it was in those dark freeway decades.

Underground construction would be just as bad in promoting traffic nightmares but less bad in destroying street life and at American construction prices would cost as much as half a dozen Mars missions for no traffic benefit. (Around US$200 MMM probably)

Yes, no traffic benefit. When we removed the half completed system, traffic actually improved. If you wonder why, look up Braess Paradox and induced demand.

Instead, I have options of the 91, CT-2, 86, 87 and 85 busses (yes, all of those within a block of my apartment) that take me to the Red/Orange line pretty swiftly. No "signal problems" or systemic track backups. Yea, busses can break down and they are pretty unreliable in other ways, but no worse than the subways here.

Also, the spiking real estate prices around all the "walksheds" near proposed green line stops is really hurting the area and benefiting wealthy landlords. I'd be fine with those landlords needing to chill for a few years.