First tunnel ride goes to transportation fans
By Peter DeMarco, Globe Correspondent, 1/19/2003
With signs saying "Seattle or Bust" and "I-90 4-ever" affixed to their beat-up beige 1986 Audi, Ravi Jain and his buddy Stefan Economou buckled themselves in at 4:30 p.m. yesterday preparing to make history.
Before them lay the Ted Williams connector tunnel linking Logan International Airport to the Massachusetts Turnpike, whose westbound lanes were cleared of orange construction barrels and opened to the public some 12 years after the start of the Big Dig.
The official ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Friday, but not until yesterday did the 3 1/2-mile, $6.5 billion connector tunnel finally start to earn its keep.
Jain and Economou, two self-professed transportation "pioneers" who had circled the Ted Williams Tunnel for four hours yesterday hoping to be the first in line, were leading the charge.
"You did a great job with this," Economou said to Massachusetts Turnpike Authority chairman Matthew J. Amorello, who came over to wish the two men a safe trip. "See you at the Zakim."
Then, as dozens of hard-hatted construction workers and other project officials applauded in the cold, Jain, Economou, and friend Steven Garfield, who sat in the back seat filming the inaugural journey with a camcorder, headed into the tunnel, which is expected to ease congestion on the Central Artery, the Southeast Expressway, and Interstate 90.
"Here we are, Thelma and Louise!" hollered Jain as they passed under the glow of its brilliant lights.
A few minutes later, having passed under Fort Point Channel, the Audi went from the tunnel to daylight again and joined other westbound Mass. Pike drivers.
"That's it! That's it!" announced Economou, throwing up his hands.
"This is one small push of the accelerator," said Jain, the driver, "and one giant push of the pedal to the metal!"
By this morning, both sides of the connector tunnel were expected to be open, ending a significant chapter of Big Dig history. The wait begins for the opening of the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, which could be open in six weeks, Amorello said.
But yesterday and this week belong to the connector road, whose true test will come Tuesday, when the rush-hour commute returns to full strength after the respite of the holiday weekend.
With the opening of the new I-90 extension and the end of restrictions on the Ted Williams Tunnel, an estimated 25,000 vehicles per day are expected to switch from the Sumner-Callahan route to the Williams route, reducing northbound traffic throughout the artery.
With the switch, traffic in the Williams Tunnel should increase to about 50,000 vehicles a day, while volume on the Sumner and Callahan is expected to drop to about 65,000 a day.
Some cautioned the transition may not happen easily, however.
"I'll bet a few people will be confused at first," said a toll booth attendant at the Sumner Tunnel yesterday. "I think the [connector] tunnel is great, but check with me in two weeks."
Those traveling to the airport from points west of Boston are also expected to benefit from speedier rides through the city with the opening of the connector road.
"There ain't no doubt I'll be taking it home today," said Bob Johnson, 47, of Southwick, as he dropped off his wife, Kate, at Logan yesterday afternoon.
"We've been waiting for this for a while," said Matt Laudon, 34, of Marlborough, who was picking up a friend and his mother-in-law at Terminal B yesterday.
At the airport's taxi stand, drivers had mixed reactions about the connector road. "I'm telling you, it will be faster coming here from Newton Corner than from Copley. There is no light!" said Sarabjeet Singh, 45, a driver for City Cab.
Another driver, who declined to give his name, was less excited. "Our business depends on people's inability to drive through Boston," he said. "For us, the Big Dig should go on forever."
For most of the day yesterday, Turnpike officials, wary of a potential traffic jam in the Ted Williams Tunnel of drivers hoping to be the first through the connector tunnel, kept secret the opening time.
At about 4 p.m., State Police closed tunnel traffic in both directions to allow construction workers to remove orange cones and barrels that had blocked the connector tunnel for the past few weeks, replacing a more permanent barrier in place since the Williams Tunnel was opened in December 1995.
Amorello -- joined by Mike Bertoulin, milestone manager for I-90, and Mike Lewis, Big Dig project director -- gathered the construction workers near the mouth of the tunnel and thanked them for their work.
"It's taken 12 years to complete this tunnel; that's a third of someone's career," he said.
"There certainly were a lot of pitfalls and issues," he continued, "but we kept going and going, and here we are today."
Finally, a blue covering was taken off the large, green highway sign directing Williams Tunnel drivers to the Mass. Pike and Worcester, and the tunnelgoers, lead by Jain and Economou, drove in.
"Imagine all the years we're going to live here," said a proud Economou, who, with Jain, were the first, according to Amorello, to cross the Big Dig's Leverett Circle Connector in 1999. "We can always say we were the first ones through this."
This story ran on page B6 of the Boston Globe on 1/19/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
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