Extreme Engineering, "Boston's Big Dig"
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Extreme Engineering, "Boston's Big Dig"
It is one of the largest, most technically and environmentally challenging infrastructure projects in American history. It contains possibly more "engineering marvels" than any other single construction project attempted by man. It includes an 8 to 10-lane-wide highway winding underground 120 feet deep through downtown Boston, a new tunnel beneath the city's harbor, and the widest cable-stayed bridge in the world. The project spans only 8 miles, but has taken 30 years to plan, 12 years to build, and cost $14.6 billion, and it still has three more years to go! The budget, even after adjusting for inflation, is larger than the budget of the Panama Canal. At the peak of construction, the project employed 5,000 workers and used 150 giant cranes every day. When the Big Dig is finally done, it will have excavated 16 million cubic yards of dirt -- enough to fill up fifteen professional football stadiums. It will have used 4 million cubic yards of concrete, enough to build a sidewalk 3-feet wide and 4-inches thick from Boston to San Francisco and back, six times. It'll have the world's largest ventilation system, 300 acres of new parks covering its serpentine path, and it will lower Boston's carbon monoxide levels by 12%. One of the central goals of the project was to replace an elevated 6-lane highway, the "Central Artery," which opened in 1959 and carried 75,000 cars a day. Because of poorly designed ramps, accidents occurred at a rate four times the national average.
AmazonUnbox | April 13, 2003
