Key ramp from tunnel reopens after ceiling work

Just in time to whiz holiday travelers from Logan International Airport, the milelong ramp from the Ted Williams Tunnel to Interstate 93 in Boston opened just after 4 p.m. yesterday.

By last evening, hundreds of cars were using the ramp, helping to ease traffic downtown and in South Boston, where thousands of vehicles had been detoured for more than four months, since the Big Dig tunnel ceiling collapse.

"We opened it just prior to the evening rush hour and traffic is flowing smoothly," said Jon Carlisle , spokesman for the Executive Office of Transportation.

The roadway -- known as Ramp D -- carried an average of 19,000 vehicles a day before it was closed because of deficiencies discovered in its ceiling.

The safety problems in the ceilings of Ramp D and other tunnel sections were found after the July 10 cave-in of ceiling panels in the Interstate 90 connector, the tunnel stretching between the interchange of I-90 and I-93 and the Ted Williams Tunnel. Milena Del Valle of Jamaica Plain, a passenger in a car headed to Logan, was crushed to death in the accident.

While Ramp D was closed, westbound traffic from the Ted Williams Tunnel was detoured onto surface streets in South Boston, following a circuitous route to I-93.

The opening leaves only the westbound side of the I-90 connector tunnel still completely closed. Transportation Secretary John Cogliano said Tuesday that repairs there are 98 percent complete.

The Federal Highway Administration must sign off before closed sections can reopen because more than half of the Big Dig's $14.6 billion cost was paid with federal funds.

Also still under repair is the ramp from the northbound side of I-93 to the connector. Cogliano said repair work there is slightly less than 50 percent complete.

Cogliano also said work to reopen all the lanes in the eastbound side of the Interstate 90 connector -- where only one lane is open -- is two-thirds done. There is no target date for opening the remaining sections.

State and federal investigators trying to determine the cause of the ceiling collapse are focusing on epoxy -- a sort of superglue -- that was used to hang 4,000-pound concrete panels from the roof in parts of the I-90 connector and its ramps. (Epoxy was not used to support the ceiling in the I-93 portion of the Big Dig, and while epoxy was used in the Ted Williams Tunnel, there it supported ceiling panels much lighter than the ones in the connector.)

The epoxy was applied to bolts embedded into the concrete roof, but after the ceiling collapse, officials determined that hundreds of bolts had slipped out of the concrete roof by as much as an inch.

The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which operates the Big Dig highways and tunnels, had never inspected the bolts after the connector ceiling was built in 1999 and 2000. The tunnel opened in 2003.

The repairs -- which required workers to replace or buttress thousands of hangers that hold up the ceiling -- have not been cheap. Cogliano said the state has paid $10 million to McCourt Construction and the state has not yet received a bill from J.F. White, the other construction company on the repair job. He hesitated to estimate the final price tag, but he has already requested $15 million from the Turnpike Authority's board of directors for McCourt alone.

After the ceiling collapse, Matthew Amorello , then turnpike chairman, predicted the tunnels would be reopened within days. Amorello resigned in August under intense pressure from Governor Mitt Romney.