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Don’t forget your shovel! Irish dig in Boston
- 31 October 2000

by Imelda and Francis Murphy

Over the generations, Boston’s topography has repeatedly been altered as its inhabitants expanded the Shawmut Peninsula - the spit of land the Pilgrims found - to make Boston a hub of commerce and finance. The process continues today as the Central Artery Tunnel, AKA The Big Dig continues apace, using the engineering skills and the labour of the Irish and the Irish American.

Long a traffic nightmare, Boston’s road infrastructure has been described as one of the most neglected in the US. The elevated six-lane highway that runs through the centre of the city, the Central Artery was opened in 1959 to carry 75,000 cars a day. It now carries 190,000 per day. It has an accident rate that is four times the national average for urban Interstates, and is subject to traffic jams about 16 hours a day. Similar problems exist in the two tunnels under Boston Harbor.

In the late 1980’s, City fathers dreamt up a new solution to a growing problem. Boston had not received its share of federal monies, when the highway system was built in the 1950/60's connecting America’s cities and airports, it was argued. No interstate highway linked Boston and Logan Airport. With the support of powerful Irish American politicians Ted Kennedy and Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, and with the eventual prospect of money from Washington- the plan to put the traffic underground in tunnels was adopted.

Challenge
The enormous challenge was to keep the city working with the auto and train traffic flowing on the old system while the new tunnels were constructed under the streets of Boston. At points, the tunnels would traverse over, then under, existing subway lines (the oldest in America), as well as sewerage and utility lines, many unmapped and thus being revealed only upon excavation.

Bostonians commonly analogise the challenge to performing heart surgery without anaesthesia on an individual who is expected to remain fully functional during the 10-year procedure.

In 1991, the first phase of the project started with the construction of a new harbour tunnel connecting Interstate 90 - the Mass Pike- to Logan Airport on the far side of Boston Harbor, but the year 2000 represents the height of activity with the construction nearly two-thirds finished and an eye to completion in 2004.

The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority relies on Bechtel/Parsons Brinkerhoff Corp. to manage the project, and co-ordinate work through scores of subcontractors, such as Perini-Kiewit and Cashman, Modern Continental Construction Company and Slattery-White to name a few.

This year alone, approximately 6000 workers have been employed to create underground highways and the new cable stayed bridge that crosses the Charles River that will deliver traffic to and from the 3.5 miles of tunnels beneath Boston. The bulk of the employees are members of one of the 25 plus labour unions engaged on the project, and their prime employer is the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, the body with overall responsibility for the $14 Billion project.

Irish workers
Irish workers are engaged in every phase of the construction, working as architects, engineers, publicists, tradesmen and labourers. They bring a sophistication and dedication befitting the most complex and expensive highway project ever undertaken.

Sean O’Neill, from Ennis, Co. Clare, is now press officer for the MTA. He came to The Big Dig first with Bechtel. O’Neill helps disperse information to the public, including over the MTA website, and arranges visits from politicians, foreign dignitaries and engineering luminaries, who come to observe the amazement that is unfolding.

“For engineers, this is Broadway, and for everyone else involved it’s a piece of history they will look back with pride once it is over,” Sean says. Sean also proudly reports that the majority of the international technical inquiries he gets via the MTA website are from Irish engineering students.

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