Is Boston even capable of building big public works projects?
The sad spectacle of the MBTA Green Line extension is enough to make a person doubt Boston’s much-vaunted reputation for achievement. Delivered more than 30 years late and plagued by cost overruns, the extension opened to great hoopla only to stutter and stall amid design and safety flaws. The GLX debacle raises the question: Is Boston even capable of building big public works projects anymore?
This is what award-winning podcaster Ian Coss asks in his nine-part series: “The Big Dig: A study in American Infrastructure,” coproduced by GBH News. The question is especially pointed now, as the urgency of climate change demands another grand era of building: solar panels, wind farms, resilient housing, public transportation. “I like to think we are on a precipice of a new era where we can build more ambitiously than we have in decades,” Coss said in an interview. But is the Big Dig saga an inspiration or a cautionary tale?
The podcast launched on Sept. 27 — 40 years to the day after then-governor Michael Dukakis announced the massive project to depress and widen the elevated Central Artery, build a third Harbor tunnel, and reknit a long swath of the city torn apart by the highway. It’s an engrossing tale that tracks what Coss calls the “hero’s journey,” from vision through planning to permitting to funding to building — and from loathing to a kind of redemption.
Coss went deep into the GBH archives to bring us voices we’ve missed: powerful House Speaker Tip O’Neill; beloved East Boston activist Anna DeFronzo. (I was interviewed for one of the episodes.) We are reminded what an engineering marvel the project was; how full of superlatives: first, largest, most expensive. The city had to continue functioning through the disruption; the job was akin, as one Boston Globe editorial writer put it, to “performing open heart surgery on a patient while they are running a marathon.” The episodes are surprisingly dramatic, with moving personal stories and cliff-hanger endings.
What comes through is the enormous act of faith required to pull the largest public works project in the country through years of changing economies and governments — could there be two transportation secretaries more philosophically at odds than Fred Salvucci and James Kerasiotes? — and the idealism to fight for something its advocates might never see realized. The podcast is well into the fourth episode before a single shovel of dirt is dug.
Because it took so long from concept to execution, the Big Dig spans several transportation eras, from the interstate highway explosion of the 1950s through what Coss calls a “do no harm” period, where highway money was diverted to public transit (the Green Line extension itself was required as mitigation for the increased traffic and pollution the new roads would bring). It is a sweep of local history fascinating even for — or especially for — those who didn’t live through it. Coss grew up in Western Massachusetts, where the Big Dig was reviled as the ultimate big-city boondoggle.
Intriguingly, Coss takes on the knotty issue of community involvement in public works: How much citizen engagement is too much? Salvucci’s grandmother lost her home when the Massachusetts Turnpike was constructed through Brighton, fueling his belief that ordinary citizens must be a part of infrastructure decisions. But the many environmental impact statements designed to improve accountability can slow or even derail a building project and certainly increase the cost.
There’s an irony here. The Big Dig was a logical outgrowth of the anti-highway movements of the early 1970s, when then-governor Francis Sargent stopped the planned Inner
As we begin these reparations, and to better prepare for the climate crisis, we need to get past Big Dig fatigue and reclaim some of that early idealism.
Belt and Interstate 95 extension that would have decimated communities from Milton to Lynn. In those days, protecting the environment mostly meant not building things. Now the environmental challenge is to build again, against a contentious political backdrop with opponents — from climate deniers to NIMBY delayers — on every side. But the question from Coss remains: “Can we build both effectively and democratically?”
Today we know that car-centric road projects ripping apart mostly poor areas were a mistake. President Biden’s big infrastructure law includes a $1 billion Reconnecting Communities program that provides money and technical assistance to restore neighborhoods severed by highways. As we begin these reparations, and to better prepare for the climate crisis, we need to get past Big Dig fatigue and reclaim some of that early idealism. Revisiting the story now is a chance not just to learn from our mistakes, but to correct them. Not to be condemned by our history, but redeemed by it.