The new northbound Central Artery tunnel, which opened to traffic on Saturday night, is getting its first big test today as it handles the full onslaught of the weekday morning commute. Tell us about your experience driving through the tunnel. Could you find your way? How was traffic moving? Do you think the new highway will cut down on traffic jams downtown?   Complete Big Dig coverage

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The tunnel opening provides for 3 lanes and expands to 4 lanes. The backup at the tunnel entrance will remain with us. How in God's name could someone design a 14 billion dollar traffic easement system that contains the same 3-lane tunnel entrance model as the former system. I understood that the tunnel contained 4 lanes from beginning to end. Typical Boston. Not enough political graft for 4-lanes. What an absolute joke o nthe taxpayers of this country. Once again. that

larry, Chelsea

I can not believe the ammount of complaints after one day. Try to remember that this project is not done. There are still many detours in place, the southbound I93 is not open yet, the old cntral artery needs to be torn down, and the most important thing will be the new surface streets. Three lanes each way, connecting to all your familair locals. Look at the plans on www.bigdig.com and see what the final completed project will look like. We have more than a year to muddle through these delays and detours before we will see the REAL benefits of this project.

Todd, Billerica

Pretty to look at but it makes me question what type of research was done in regards to traffic patterns. This is gonna sound confusing: The rightmost lane is an exit-only lane. Would make sense if after the exit a new right hand lane was introduced. Rather, the lane that was formerly left of the rightmost lane is now the exit-only lane. So you basically have drivers that don't want to exit always needing to shift left. But at the same time, once in the tunnel, there is a time (from my initial observation) where new traffic is introduced to the tunnel from the left hand side. And if I'm not mistaken, it's traffic from the airport tunnel. Now while I know that there is a new tunnel that leads airport traffic directly to I-90, if a person wants to go from the airport to Storrow, there is basically less than a mile of distance to go from the leftmost lane across 4 other lanes to the exit lane. That doesn't really seem practical. If someone can correct me on this, please do.

natis, Allston

This is ridiculous. After spending all this money and time, I still have to share the highway with other cars that are trying to drive through Boston! And sometimes, when a lot of us are trying to go the same way at the same time, I actually can't drive as fast as I would like to (around 90 MPH)! This sucks. This is America, this is the twenty-first century, couldn't they have made the tunnel, like, thirty lanes wide or something, with fifteen or so exits for every above-ground intersection? And couldn't they have directly beamed instructions on how to use the new tunnel into my brain as I slept, instead of me having to tediously pick up a newspaper or look at a web site? Lame. And it's not even finished yet. They should have made northbound drivers continue to use the old Artery for another year until the southbound side was finished, too, because getting our hopes up like this by giving us the new tunnel now sucks. I'm distraught, I need to go get a tissue.

Chris, Bridgewater

My thought it that the Globe must be disappointed that so few people actually read it. All of the "problems" discussed on this message board were things addressed in the Globe dozens of times in the last few weeks--the number of exits, their location, why so few?, thru traffic left, etc--yet no one seemed aware of them. Oh well. As for complaints....yikes..the thing's been open for exactly ONE (1) rush hour, and people are complainig already.

Locutious, Borg

So this is what we've been waiting for another big winding atery that is already outdated? Come on it's a big S turn with 3 on ramps and 2 off ramps. It has four lanes, but at on point 2 of those four lanes are exit only lanes, what good is that? The S turns will just slow traffic down. No Breakdown lane? What happens when ther is an accident? What about the flat tires? This is a joke. 14 Billion Dollars for something that can't handle the traffic. Please tell me there is more to this whole Money Pit.

Dennis, Brockton

Where's the extra capacity I thought the tunnel would have? It has no more lanes than the old expressway. I'm not buying the claim that somehow traffic will get better with this tunnel, unless you mean that the delays we've been experiencing for a decade will finally be gone.

Dean, Boston

Don't see how 3 lanes underground are supposed to be better than 3 lanes above ground. If anything it's worse because above ground at least we had fresh air and something to look at when stuck in traffic. Huge waste of money that should have been invested in better public transportation instead. Peole have gone to jail for less.

Manny, Wakefield

I wish the builders of the tunnel can build a new city on the South Shore. That was all the South Shore losers can run each other of the roads and bitch to each bout their problems and we will not have to see them... ahh a perfect world... 10 billion more... it is worth it !

Mike, South Boston

What a bunch of negative nellies on this board. If any of you are from the South Shore that means you do not pay any tolls unlike us North Shoreres so your criticisms mean nothing. Try paying over ten bucks a day in tolls then complain. I think the new project rocks. And as for criticims that the money could have been better spent I say no-way. Better spent for whom? At least this way I can see my tax money being used for something and on something that I personally use. LONG LIVE THE BIG DIG

Joe , Winthrop