A couple of analysis pieces on the Big Dig are particularly worthwhile. First is a Globe Ideas piece by Commonwealth Inc. editor Robert Keough. (Hat tip: Dan Kennedy). “There’s no evidence-yet-that the leaking water, falling debris, and plunging panels can be linked to the revolving door of transportation secretaries and Turnpike Authority chairmen,” he writes. “But it’s hard to believe that the management turnover and the distance from elected authority was good for maintaining standards, continuity, and singleness of purpose in a hugely complex enterprise. At worst, the turmoil at the top, combined with lack of accountability to anyone outside the project, left the state project managers and Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, the private consortium in charge of design and construction of the tunnels and roadways, with no one to answer to.”
Second, David Warsh offers the most novel and contrarian insight I’ve heard: that the cost overruns and the shoddy construction were two separate and opposite problems.
Despite the expense, the Big Dig is a considerable success. Its cost escalated from a low-ball initial appropriation of $2.5 billion in O’Neill’s time to an eventual cost of more than $15 billion, thanks in large part to budgetary gamesmanship, especially after control of the U.S. House of Representatives passed from the Democrats to the Republicans. Ever-mounting pressure to trim expenses in recent years led to ineffective oversight, shoddy workmanship in some details and lackadaisical inspection protocols — a kind of failure of fiscal nerve that now has translated into a tragic death… The old elevated highway had to be replaced one way or another in any event; given the complexity of the challenge, Boston did about as well as it could.
He adds, “In a century that seems likely to be dominated by adjusting to the consequences of climate change, there will be many more such large-scale undertakings, not fewer of them.” Note that Warsh is saying this as a fairly centrist guy, for what that’s worth. If he’s right, the Big Dig lessons eventually learned may not be the ones we think we’re learning now.
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