Big Collapse

Take the subway? After Michael Chertoff has proclaimed it safe? I'm not filled with confidence. I'll just stay at home, thank you very much.

I mean, usually, there's at least a couple hours of sympathy for the person who dies, and the surviving family, before starting to lay blame.

Yes, I realize I'm the pot calling the kettle black, but maybe I'm just feeling kind today.

I feel bad for the woman, and her husband.

While I feel it's always tradgic to see someone lose their life in an accident and I believe if negligence was involved people should be prosecuted fully; I'm really tired of everyone using the Big Dig as a whipping boy for their frustrations. This was the largest and most complicated engineering project ever undertaken in human history, before the Three Gourges Dam project in China. It attempted to do things that were never done before and broke new ground in multiple technology fronts. Is it perfect?...No. Was there corruption and greed?...Yes. (as in any public or private project this size). But the end result is an engineering and design marvel...and the best part is that IT WORKS! According to independent studies, drive times through Boston have gone from an average of 20 minutes to 5 Minutes and the trip into Logan from MetroWest is now easy and straight forward, relieving the artery of the additional traffic.

As a professional driver with experience in engineering and someone whose driven in Boston through the entire history of the Big Dig, I am impressed at what has been achieved and how they did it. While there have been numerous problems throughout the process (some downright inexcusable), I do not believe they are any more or less common than any other project of this size and scope, but rather, people just want to use it to heap their scorn and general outrage about goverment and life in general. Poor or spotty radio and cell signals?...Whaaaa, get off the phone and drive. Leaks in the tunnel?...It wasn't finished, the above-ground work was not complete and guess what...all tunnels leak. Maybe not that much, but ask any engineer; it's impossible to make a tunnel 100% watertight. Cost overruns and delays? What do you expect when you let the goverment run a project of this magnitude and complexity. Want it done right and on budget. It should have been privatized from the start. It would have cost 30% less and been done in half the time.

In the end, the Big Dig is ours, like it or not. We can't change what's gone on in the past, but learn from it and move on into the future. Let's stop complaining about what wrong with it and move on to fix whatever problems exist and take some pride in the engineering marvel that it is. The big green monster that divided the city is a memory and the greenway is starting to take shape. Once it's done, it will be a jewel of the city that transforms it, just like the Bunker Hill Bridge transformed our skyline.

So all you Big Dig haters and complainer, please give it a rest. All your naysaying does nothing to solve the problems and issues. And quite frankly, I'm tired of hearing it. (Now let me get back to figuring a way around all this traffic and to Logan!!)