Boston's roads have their own night watchmen
While the city sleeps, Dan Malone and a crew of two to five keep watch over its major roads. From 10:15 p.m. until 6:20 a.m., they work the night shift at the state-of-the-art Big Dig Operations Control Center, or OCC, tucked away on Massport Haul Road in South Boston. Since 1995, when the OCC opened in a trailer not far from its current site, Malone and his fellow operators have directed road closures, guided befuddled drivers to alternate routes, and through recorded footage, helped police investigate late-night accidents.
Malone, who started out as a toll collector, remembers sitting in the Sumner and Callahan tunnels to do some of the monitoring that is now done electronically. "The system is so complicated that we have enough wire in this facility to run around the world 30 times," he says.
Malone and his colleagues have seen fatal wrecks, oversize trucks wedged in the tunnels, and, occasionally, someone walking or skateboarding through. They've guided lost and frantic mothers to Logan International Airport to pick up their children and have driven out to stranded drivers to wait with them for a tow truck.
The pay for an OCC operator ranges from around $45,000 to $60,000 a year, and the job requires a good measure of resilience and large amounts of caffeine.
It looks like NASA in here with all of the monitors. How do you decide who watches what?
Each night the guys monitor different directions. A couple monitor north-south; a couple of others monitor east-west. We have about 500 pan-tilt-zoom cameras all feeding information in. We can see 93 north and south from the Fortress Building to Exit 28, and 90 east and west to the airport to the end of the connector tunnel. We can see the surface roads and the Leverett south and north connectors. We can follow you into the Prudential [Tunnel], but not as quickly.
One night when a few of the entrances to the Ted Williams Tunnel were closed and I couldn't find my way home, one of the guys was able to spot me and direct me. It was a little freaky.
Well, if drivers are lost, we can pick them up on our cameras and direct them to where they need to go, provided they stop.
Do you get a lot of calls from drivers?
Some people are used to the closures now, since they've been going on for quite a while. There's a learning curve. A lot of people get lost in the Leverett Circle area, and we try to guide them out. Some people from out west will call because they're heading to the airport at 3 a.m. and want to know if the tunnel will be closed. We get some complaints - a lot of people aren't happy with the [detour] signs. Some people want signs every 50 feet.
What are some of the memorable calls you've taken? I had a woman who called one night in a panic because she was trying to get to the airport to pick up her 14-year-old daughter. It was around 2 a.m. I kept her on the line the whole time and took her through South Boston and through the emergency ramp [along the side of the OCC] because she was in such a panic. I said, 'Don't go too fast or we're going to lose you.' Meanwhile, I called the State Police and had them stay with the daughter at the airport. My heart went out to the mother. If it were my daughter, I would be panicky, too. These are the things you do for people sometimes.
How do people know the number to call? It doesn't seem to be well-publicized.
If they dial 511, they'll get Mass. Highway. If it's a turnpike-related issue, they transfer it over to us.
Will there ever be a time when there aren't entrance closures?
A lot of people thought that once the Ted Williams Tunnel was built, there wouldn't be. But there's usually something going on. Lately, there have been closures so cellphone service can be installed.
What do you need to know to get this job? Well, I had worked part-time as a toll collector before. But what really got me this job was that I had worked as a police dispatcher. [The OCC] needed someone with some computer experience and first-responder dispatching experience. It's not like working with taxicabs - they want someone who can tell the police if it's a fender bender they're looking at, or something more serious. With this system, they know exactly what they're getting into.
How long would it take someone to get used to all of the information here?
I would say it would take a year to 18 months before someone is comfortable working alone without asking a lot of questions.
I imagine nothing can really prepare you for some of the things you see.
Two weeks ago, we had a woman come off of a ramp too fast on a motorcycle. She had just gotten her learner's permit, and had just gotten married two weeks before. Another time, on a Sunday morning at around 8, we had a couple on a motorcycle coming in northbound. They weren't speeding. They weren't doing anything wrong. They just must have hit something. Seeing things like that is tough on a lot of people here.
I imagine. What you see is recorded?
Everything here is recorded and kept for 19 days. It's helpful to the police in investigating car accidents. A lot of times, someone will say 'Someone cut me off,' but then we go back and see he was alone and hit something. We win most of the time. 