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‘You’re talking years here…
Posted by Raven on July 28th, 2005
For the love of someone…the damn tunnels will take YEARS to fix, and then they will always need repairwork. The Big Dig has been nothing but a finanical disaster for the city of Boston, the state of MA and all Americans. We can all thank Fat Teddy Kennedy for this major blooper of a dig.
Leaks in the Big Dig’s Interstate 93 tunnel roof will persist for years to come, despite current efforts to patch them with a grout sealant, according to an independent report released last night by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.
The grouting program will seal an estimated 3,600 leaks in the tunnels this year, but more than 42 percent of those seals are expected to reopen, requiring a second round of grouting, the report said.
At a result, Turnpike Authority managers estimate they will face 1,543 leaks next year, 661 in 2007, 284 in 2008, 121 in 2009, and 77 in 2010, the report says. No estimate is made beyond 2010.
Driving through this tunnel gives everyone the creeps. It smells like water. You drive through water. Water drips and gushes through the tunnel walls and roof. How safe can it really be??
In November, when the Globe reported that the I-93 tunnels had hundreds of leaks, Jack K. Lemley, an outside consultant hired to investigate the problem, said of future repairs: ”You’re talking years here, even a decade.”
Turnpike Authority officials and the Big Dig’s management consultant, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, disputed that statement. ”The program to seal leaks will be completed within months, not years,” Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff said in a statement issued Nov. 23.
But since then, Turnpike Authority officials have acknowledged that significant work will continue on the massive tunnel and highway project at least through January, four months after its long-pledged substantial completion date of September.
Only the idiots believed that the repairs would take months.
”As the work continues, the recurrence rate [of leaks] could change,” the report posted last night said. ”Any increase in the recurrence rate will result in more grout locations and higher incurred costs by MTA until a steady state is reached.”
The Deloitte report said no estimate of the cost of future leaks had been made by the Turnpike Authority or Big Dig managers until March. At that time, Kenneth M. Mead, the US Department of Transportation’s inspector general, was threatening to hold up $81 million in federal funding for the project unless he was assured that Turnpike Authority officials were adequately addressing the leaks. The Deloitte report also concluded that fixing and preventing leaks has cost $38 million. Nevertheless, the report said the total cost for the Big Dig should remain within the estimate of $14.625 billion because the leak costs are paid from contingency accounts.
14 BILLION. Billion….It has to be most expensive dig in the history of the world.
