But in 1949, six years before Congress and President Eisenhower funded the Interstate Highway System, Massachusetts started building the hideous green steel Central Artery that would scar Boston, physically and psychologically, for the rest of the century. By the late 1940s, Boston still didn’t have its highway, despite two decades of planning-and despite the increasing need for fast access to the city, which was hemorrhaging jobs to the suburbs. The Great Depression and the Second World War temporarily interfered with the idea. rapid transit subways.” The state and city had the luxury of deciding to build an elevated highway because bottom-up, Jane Jacobs–inspired urban coalitions didn’t exist yet to thwart the era’s top-down, Robert Moses–style urban planners. But a “vehicular subway”-the first mention of the idea that, half a century later, would become the Big Dig-“would interfere with sewers and with. in downtown Boston” would hurt some residents’ quality of life. The Central Artery’s first planners acknowledged that “the erection of. In 1930, a city planning board noted that Boston’s “street system should be adapted to the requirements of the motor age” and proposed an elevated expressway. The reasons for the Big Dig date back nearly 80 years. The Big Dig’s story is an invaluable lesson: How can America invest in infrastructure-and do it smart? Its stewards have encountered every imaginable public-infrastructure pitfall, and fallen into many. And last year, after falling concrete panels in a Big Dig tunnel that had been open for three years killed a 38-year-old car passenger, the project became a reminder that infrastructure failure can exact a cruel price.Įvery major decision that could conceivably be made on an infrastructure project was made on the Big Dig, from how to pay for it to how to forge the public and political support for it to how to manage its construction and maintenance. (Wouldn’t it be cheaper to raise Boston than to bury the highway? Congressman Barney Frank asked.) Later, when fewer people viewed the Dig whimsically, it was the setting of a 2002 murder-mystery novel. Long before construction peaked around the turn of the millennium, eating up $100 million a month for three years, the Big Dig was a local legend, spawning dozens of jokes. The good news: no matter how complex and expensive any future project is, it’s unlikely to be more so than the Big Dig, Massachusetts’s three-decade-long quest to bury and expand the Central Artery, Boston’s major interstate highway, and carve out a new underwater tunnel to Logan Airport.Ĭonceived in the 1970s and finished, more or less, in 2005, the Big Dig is modern America’s most ambitious urban-infrastructure project, spanning six presidents and seven governors, costing $14.8 billion, and featuring many never-before-done engineering and construction marvels. Spending so much money wisely is daunting. Internal applications, then our B2B based Bizapedia Pro API™ might be the answer for you.States, cities, and towns across America must spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually to preserve the nation’s infrastructure-the backbone of its private-sector economy-and yet more to build the next generation of roads, bridges, tunnels, and dams. If you are looking for something more than a web based search utility and need to automate company and officer searches from within your WHAT'S INCLUDED IN THE ADVANCED SEARCH FORM? Utilize our advanced search form to filter the search results by Company Name, City, State, Postal Code, Filing Jurisdiction, Entity Type, Registered Agent,įile Number, Filing Status, and Business Category. While logged in and authenticated, you will not be asked to solve any complicated Recaptcha V2 challenges. In addition, all pages on Bizapedia will be served to you completely ad freeĪnd you will be granted access to view every profile in its entirety, even if the company chooses to hide the private information on their profile from the general public. Your entire office will be able to use your search subscription.
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