Safety board sends team to assess design

WASHINGTON -- The National Transportation Safety Board launched a formal investigation yesterday of Monday's fatal Big Dig tunnel collapse, amid calls from Congress for more sweeping probes of the project's management.

The NTSB has dispatched a seven-member investigatory team, which is now in Boston. The review will cover ``structural design, materials, construction practices, maintenance, and relevant regulatory framework," Mark V. Rosenker, the board's acting chairman, wrote in a letter to the Massachusetts congressional delegation.

``This tragic accident raises some serious safety issues that require independent investigation," Rosenker said in a statement. ``We need to find precisely what went wrong in that tunnel and how to prevent similar accidents in the future."

The safety board's inquiry will be limited to determining the cause of the accident and recommending steps to ensure safety and will not focus on assigning blame among the public and private entities involved in the Big Dig. The board does not have regulatory or enforcement powers, and Rosenker said in the letter that it ``is ill-equipped to undertake a wide-ranging review" of the project's overall safety.

Monday's incident has prompted renewed calls for scrutiny of the project that has become a national symbol of pork-barrel spending. Federal taxpayers have contributed $8.549 billion toward the $14.6 billion project. Congress voted to halt federal support in 2000, after cost overruns.

US Representative Michael E. Capuano, a Somerville Democrat, asked the inspector general of the Department of Transportation yesterday to conduct an inquiry into the project's management to determine who is responsible for the construction flaws that led to Monday's tragedy. Such a step would be necessary before officials could contemplate efforts to recoup taxpayer dollars, he said.

Capuano said he is considering introducing federal legislation to create a special commission that would investigate the Big Dig.

``I do not want to involve the federal government, but I will bring it in as much as is necessary," said Capuano, who serves on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Senator John F. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, welcomed the involvement of the safety board but said other agencies must help address questions about Big Dig mismanagement. He called for hearings in the Senate Commerce Committee, a panel on which he serves.

``Public confidence can only be restored through the sustained, vigilant oversight that has been lacking from those currently responsible for overseeing the Big Dig," Kerry said.

Further hearings are also possible in the House Government Reform Committee, which held a hearing in Boston on the project last spring. Representative Stephen F. Lynch, a South Boston Democrat who sits on that committee, has made a formal request for another hearing, but said it will probably be delayed until the outcome of the criminal investigation being conducted by Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly.

The Big Dig -- long known in Congress as ``Tip's Tunnel," after its patron, the late House speaker Thomas P. ``Tip" O'Neill, a Cambridge Democrat -- has been the subject of derision among congressional critics because of cost overruns. Monday's accident has intensified scrutiny of the project, said Keith Ashdown, vice president for policy at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan government watchdog group.

``It's the granddaddy of transportation pork," Ashdown said. `` If we don't learn [the cause of the problems] after somebody died, we should be pretty ashamed."

The involvement of the National Transportation Safety Board was requested by members of Congress, who noted that the board is one of the few government entities that has had no involvement in the sprawling construction project. The board is an independent agency that is not affiliated with the Federal Highway Administration or the Department of Transportation.

The highway administration, which is also investigating the accident, is led by J. Richard Capka, who managed the Big Dig from 2000 to 2002. A Capka spokesman said the administrator has not recused himself from the investigation, but added that he will not be directly involved in conducting it.

State-level investigations are being overseen by Reilly's office and by Governor Mitt Romney, both of whom have political considerations that could complicate their inquiries, Capuano said.

``I don't have much faith in anyone else up here," other than the NTSB, Capuano said. ``The governor is running for president. The lieutenant governor is running for governor. The attorney general is running for governor, and the head of the [highway administration] used to [oversee] the Big Dig."