Big Dig makes for big tour
As costs balloon, project officials
offer tours to the public
By Christopher A. Szechenyi, Boston.com Staff, 04/11/00
BOSTON - They climbed rickety, 20-foot ladders, crossed muddy trenches, gingerly maneuvered over electric lines and headed down a ramp under construction 120 feet below the ground -- all to get a glimpse of the $13 billion Big Dig.
A teacher, a secretary and a batch of insurance salesmen were among a group of 15 people who scrambled underground this morning for the first public tour of the largest -- and perhaps most controversial -- construction project in the nation.
"I thought this tour would be benign," said Christine Brazas, a Lowell resident who recently moved to the Bay State from New Hampshire. "I didn't think we would be climbing up wooden ladders and across huge gulches. This is fabulous."
As enormous trucks carrying mountains of dirt rumbled above, Brazas and the others slowly walked underground, where clanking and buzzing sounds filled the damp air.
They passed a whining saw throwing off sparks like a Fourth of July sparkler as they headed toward the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Summer Street.
Wearing hard hats, thick yellow boots and luminescent vests, the tour group wended its way all over -- and under -- the massive construction site.
Along the way, Terry Brown, a Big Dig spokesman, described what they were seeing and tried to help them make sense of the tangle of steel.
"It's important for us to understand it," said Bennett Halprin, an MBTA bus driver from Lynn. "As a taxpayer, I'm paying for this."
Despite well-publicized cost overruns, most of the tourists thought what they saw was "fantastic," as Anthony Paula put it. The 75-year-old retired contractor said he only wished he could have been involved in removing some of the 13 million cubic feet of earth hauled away to depress the Central Artery.
That's enough dirt to fill Foxboro Stadium 14 times to the rim.
"It's going to pay off in the long run," Paula said. "We're going to have to go through with this no matter what the cost."
Word of James Kerasiotes' resignation spread through the group, but most tour members focused instead on the project itself, standing in awe of the engineering feats involved in building a tunnel under Fort Point Channel and weaving a road below South Station.
"It's so huge. It's historic," said Julie Viens, a Cambridge resident who works at Harvard University in education research. "How often do you get to stand in the middle of something like this?"
Seen from below, the Big Dig looks like a separate city, a Tonka Toy dream come alive. To an outsider "it was just this amorphous hole in the ground," Viens said. "I really didn't know what the Big Dig was."
But as she and the others sometimes breathlessly wound their way below South Station, across the railroad tracks and down into the pits, they began to develop a deeper appreciation for the massive project.
"It's an engineering marvel," she said.
So far, more than 800 people have reserved spots on a planned series of public tours, each of which lasts about three hours and includes a lengthy slide show. Tours are already booked through October, when they will end because of the weather, and about 150 others are on a waiting list.
"It's very ambitious -- and much needed," said Bill McAreavey, a 38-year-old health insurance salesman from Providence who often fights traffic jams around Boston.
"But I think there ought to be better fiscal management," he added. "People should be paying more attention to the bottom line. We're all paying for this project. Revelations about the budget should not be taken lightly."
Others were inspired by the complexity and scale of the project, especially when seen up close.
"I'm surprised they can do it for the price they've stated so far," said Bob Harpin, a Franklin resident who works as the administrator of a development company. "The engineering and the obstacles are remarkable."
Halprin, the bus driver, agreed: "This is something I'll be able to talk about for years to come."
Former Big Dig chief James Kerasiotes.
New Big Dig chief Andrew S. Natsios.
