Pike tunnel finished, and new era begins
By Raphael Lewis, Globe Staff, 1/18/2003
Forty-eight years after work on the Massachusetts Turnpike began, roughly 3,000 laborers, engineers, and dignitaries gathered in a tunnel beneath the Fort Point Channel yesterday to unveil the last 3 1/2 miles of that highway.
The ceremony signaled the completion of one of the most technically challenging highway projects ever attempted in America: creating a tunnel that sits above a live subway, in a channel full of sea water, and beneath Amtrak and commuter rail lines.The celebration of the $6.5-billion connector to Logan Airport, which included bunting, a brass band, and a veritable who's who of local political leaders, also marked the completion of Interstate 90's 3,000-plus-mile route from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic.
Everyone from the workers who helped pour cement to the politicians who pushed through funding gazed at the tiled walls, paved road surface, and electronic message signs, and spoke with awe, pride, and relief that the Big Dig is finally winding down, 12 years after construction began.
"The feeling is euphoria," said Michael Bertoulin, who has managed the I-90 section of the Big Dig for much of the past 11 years. "Having been down here in the raw tunnel, with all the issues we faced, it's just a great day for the city and the thousands of engineers and workers. It's going to be seen as one of the projects of the millennium some day."
The reality sank in when Mary E. Peters, administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, strode to the rostrum and pronounced dramatically, "I-90 is now complete."
Turnpike officials said late yesterday they expected to open the westbound side of the new roadway, from Logan Airport toward Worcester, by early tonight, and the eastbound side by tomorrow morning. The feeder tunnel from the Southeast Expressway to Logan Airport should open next weekend, they said.
Turnpike chairman Matthew Amorello, master of ceremonies at yesterday's event, said the opening would be "an immense relief" after so many disappointing delays in recent months.
Governor Mitt Romney, the latest of five governors involved with the project, saluted the "great inventiveness" of the people who designed the tunnels, especially the six, 30 million-pound concrete boxes that make up the Fort Point Channel crossing.
"Even the crustiest Boston driver has to respect" the new road system, Romney declared.
US Representative Edward J. Markey of Malden, the most senior of the state's Washington contingent at the ceremony, said the new I-90 tunnels will affect driving in Boston the way the Panama Canal changed international shipping a century ago.
"All of you suburban sailors out there, take heart!" Markey thundered in a speech that drew laughs. "We will never, never, never, give this tunnel back!"
US Representative Stephen F. Lynch of South Boston adopted a more somber tone when he asked the crowd to observe a moment of silent prayer for the three laborers who had died on the job since the project began, prompting the sea of construction workers before him and behind him to doff their hard hats.
Lynch then raised a topic few had considered: What major project will come next to Boston? A few laborers with the Iron Workers Local 7, he said, had jokingly suggested building an elevated highway through downtown Boston. "That'll have to wait," Lynch told the crowd.
Of all the project's key contributors on the stage yesterday, only one drew a standing ovation: Frederick P. Salvucci, the former transportation secretary who, perhaps more than anyone else, marshaled the Big Dig from idle banter to reality.
Before the event, Salvucci said he was thrilled that the I-90 component of the now-$14.6 billion project was finished. With that in place, he said, South Boston's waterfront district was poised to become the "new Back Bay," a model that would help spur the conversion of acres of parking lots and rail yards to housing, hotels, businesses, and parks.
"There's no other city in the United States with a chance to build its downtown the way we have," Salvucci said.
Many in attendance yesterday said they sorely missed two men who could not be there: US Representative J. Joseph Moakley and former US House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, both of whom died before they could admire the project they worked so hard to finance with federal dollars. Rumors that Moakley's or O'Neill's name could wind up adorning a plaque on the new tunnel were fairly persistent, but officials said there are no plans to name it.
In the short term, the new Turnpike connection will mostly affect drivers who travel from west of Boston to Logan Airport, a journey that will shrink by as much as 30 minutes, thanks to the new connection. The Ted Williams Tunnel, which today carries about 30,000 vehicles a day, will now hold nearly twice that number.
The effects will ripple throughout the downtown highway system. The Sumner-Callahan tunnels will lose about 25,000 vehicles a day, dropping to roughly 65,000 daily. The Central Artery will see a similar drop, officials said.
For that reason, Yanni K. Tsipis, author of "Building the Mass Pike," said the final 3 1/2-mile stretch was at least as important as all the miles west of it.
"It's an engineering and political miracle that it happened, but the effects drivers will see are no miracle. They're very real," Tsipis said.
But construction workers at the event acknowledged bittersweet feelings. For many, the winding down of the Big Dig, which employed 5,000 people at its height two years ago, means looking for a new job.
"It's definitely a good, rewarding feeling," said Joe Czapiga, who helped construct the tunnel where the event took place for J.F. White Contracting Co. "First, we party. Then, go look for more work. But nothing quite like this job, that's for sure."
Like the dedication of the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge last year, yesterday's ceremony was not followed by a steady stream of smiling motorists, the traditional ribbon-cutting finale.
Still, after Romney, Amorello, Markey, and others cut the ribbon, a motorcade of police cars and MBTA buses ferried the crowds through the completed tunnels to East Boston, turned around, and came back through the Ted Williams Tunnel before exiting via a new off-ramp to South Boston.
It met with rave reviews.
"I love it," said 27-year veteran T driver George Adams, who drove the first bus through the new tunnel system. "It's definitely nice."
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 1/18/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
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