Big Dig roads are safe, says Romney

A comprehensive engineering review of Boston's highways, tunnels, and bridges, ordered after the fatal collapse of a tunnel ceiling in July, has found the road system to be "fundamentally safe," Governor Mitt Romney said yesterday.

Romney's so-called "stem to stern" safety review of the Big Dig system did find a variety of relatively minor flaws, including cracking concrete and water leaks near electrical equipment.

Romney ordered the assessment July 14 amid growing public anxiety over the safety of the Big Dig, which includes the Interstate 90 and Interstate 93 tunnels, connecting ramps and viaducts, and the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge. Preliminary inspections in the days after the accident had found widespread deficiencies in the way the ceiling was attached in the I-90 connector tunnel, where falling ceiling panels crushed a motorist on July 10. "I don't think anyone can feel comfortable today driving though the tunnels," Romney said the next day.

That anxiety was absent yesterday when Romney, appearing at a State House press conference, named numerous continuing concerns but pronounced himself confident that the tunnels are not dangerous. "I feel as safe driving in the [Big Dig] tunnels as I do driving anywhere," he said.

Polls showed Romney's public standing improved dramatically last summer as he took control of the Big Dig inspections and forced Matthew J. Amorello to resign as chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which oversees the Big Dig.

Yesterday, a reporter asked Romney, who leaves office in January and is considering running for the Republican nomination for president, whether his opinion of the Turnpike Authority had changed since last summer.

"I must admit that when the ceiling panel fell, my reaction was: 'What in the world are we going to find when we open Pandora's Box. How many things are we going to find where there was real shoddy either design or construction?' " Romney said.

"And I must admit that I am, at this stage, by virtue of this review, a good deal more confident that the tunnel and [Central] Artery system is safe than I was 90 days ago."

The most serious flaws found to date are those that led to the tunnel ceiling collapse, which killed Milena Del Valle, a 38-year-old Jamaica Plain woman who was a passenger in a car en route to Logan International Airport.

Investigators have focused on epoxy, a sort of superglue used to attach bolts to a concrete roof and ro support concrete ceiling panels weighing 4,000 pounds each.

In the days after Del Valle's death, inspections showed that hundreds of bolts had come loose throughout the connector and in the lengthy ramps carrying traffic from the westbound side to I-93.

Construction crews have worked since July to replace bolts or add new ones in the connector and ramps. Romney said yesterday that work in the ramp from the westbound Ted Williams Tunnel to I-93 north and south is complete and awaits approval of federal authorities to open. Romney did not specify an opening date. He also said repairs on the still-closed westbound lanes of the connector are 95 percent done, but did not give an opening date.

One lane of the eastbound connector is open. The ramp leading from South Boston to the eastbound Ted Williams Tunnel opened in August.

The other major finding of the review concerned the Sumner and Callahan tunnels, which predate the Big Dig by decades but are operated by the Turnpike Authority. Romney announced in September that engineers had found that the concrete roof of the Sumner is decaying and needs to be replaced and that approximately 400 bolts holding up the ceiling in the Callahan had come loose. Though officials have not outlined a repair schedule, the work is expected to begin next summer and take many months.

The Turnpike Authority has already started fixing many of the problems and is working on plans to address the remainder of the findings presented yesterday, following the review by the Illinois-based engineering firm Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc:

Reinforcing cables stretched beneath concrete highway surfaces are susceptible to rusting, because some of the cavities through which they are threaded are not filled with grout. While calling the finding "pretty significant," Romney said there was no immediate danger.

The massive concrete columns of the Leonard Zakim Bridge are cracked in some locations. Romney did not outline a specific plan to repair the cracks.

Viaducts in a few areas are more susceptible to damage by earthquakes than necessary, because of the way support columns are placed.

Water leaking into tunnels in a few places is pooling where electrical equipment operates.

The fire alarm and detection systems need improvement. Heat sensors embedded in the tunnels were supposed to trigger fire alarms and activate the ventilation system at a certain temperature, but the Turnpike Authority abandoned the system because tests showed the alarms were not triggered quickly enough.

Romney said an important safeguard will be added when cellphone service is established in the I-93 and I-90 connector tunnels, allowing motorists to alert authorities to problems.

The operations control center in South Boston is used by more personnel than planned, and that may have been a factor in power outages there in August and September. Romney said outages were 15 minutes or longer.

Romney expressed his deepest concern about the lack of inspections carried out by the Turnpike Authority between the time when major segments of the project opened to traffic in early 2003 and the time of the ceiling collapse.

"If there is any one area that I think is most deficient, it has been the inspection process," he said. "The inspections that you usually have when you first begin using a system just were delayed and delayed. We still have not been able to find any report that there was ever any inspections being done on a regular basis where the ceiling panel fell.

"The fact there was not in place a comprehensive, regular program is very disconcerting," he said.

Romney said the cost of the review so far is $4.5 million. He said engineers will continue to investigate and make recommendations concerning repairs. The legislature authorized up to $20 million for the review.

Sean P. Murphy can be reached at smurphy@globe.com.