CTroyMathis
24 May 2003, 05:17 AM
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/138/focus/Obstacle_course+.shtml
The Boston Globe
By Anthony Flint
Obstacle course
Has the Big Dig killed off the urban megaproject?
5/18/2003
With its glowing, gently curving tunnel deep beneath the city, punctuated by the obelisk peaks and bright white cables of the Zakim Bridge, the Big Dig has become a symbol of triumphant engineering and urban reinvention. But after two decades of delays and cost overruns, it also stands as a kind of $14.6 billion tombstone for the contemporary megaproject-one that bears a cautionary inscription for planners and politicians from Seattle to Atlanta: Don't try this at home.
The Big Dig, however, is merely the biggest and most dramatic example of the twists and turns facing today's megaprojects-the modern-day versions of the Verrazano Bridge or Hoover Dam. Escalating costs, complications and delays are pretty much guaranteed in major public works projects these days, according to Alan Altshuler, a professor of urban policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and David Luberoff, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. They are the authors of ''Megaprojects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment,'' published this month by the Brookings Institution Press.
The typical megaproject today is in a complicated setting-an existing urban area-that tends to be chock-full of engineering surprises. Design blueprints are rarely fully completed before construction starts, and changes are made on the fly. Neighborhood disruption must be minimized, an expensive exercise known as ''mitigation.'' And to win essential public support, planners end up promising that other, smaller and sometimes unrelated projects will also get done. The process ends up becoming a vicious circle, the authors suggest, in which the efforts to make megaprojects palatable lead to delays and cost overruns, which makes the public even warier than they were to begin with.
Altshuler and Luberoff (the former served as Governor Francis Sargent's state transportation secretary from 1971-74) don't pronounce the death of all megaprojects. But with money short and homeland security costs mounting, they believe such projects may not get much consideration in the near-term. That's particularly bad news for urban areas, where the ''smart growth'' movement is counting on massive investment in megaprojects to make city living a more viable alternative to the suburbs. In an era of shrinking budgets and skeptical citizens, there may soon be a whole lot of vision downsizing going on.
It wasn't always so hard to build big. Before the 1970s, when there were complications, like a neighborhood being in the way, master planners like Robert Moses made sure the projects got done regardless. In Massachusetts, the Moses figure was William Callahan, who gave the state Route 128, the Massachusetts Turnpike and the Callahan tunnel to East Boston, which complemented the existing Sumner tube.
The Mass. Pike is a fine example of how easy megaprojects used to be. Engineers mapped out the route, took the land, and poured the concrete. Even the slightly more complicated turnpike extension into downtown Boston was free of overruns, says Yanni Tsipis, author of ''Building the Mass Pike'' (2002). The 123-mile ''lifeline of Massachusetts,'' completed in 1957, took only seven years.
By the end of the 1960s, however, things started to get complicated. Inspired by the likes of Jane Jacobs, city dwellers rose up and fought against urban renewal, slum clearance, and proposals for highways rammed through inner cities. The revolt came too late for Boston's West End, which was demolished starting in the `50s, but it did put a stop to the planned Southwest Expressway and Inner Belt highways.
The near-term result was a renewed focus on mass transit, specifically the extension of the Red Line and the construction of the Orange Line along the Southwest Corridor. But the long-term implication was that no dirt could be shoveled without broad public support. New York's fabled Westway-the extension of the West Side Highway to Lower Manhattan under a deck of parklands and development along the Hudson River-was finally scrapped in 1985 because there was no adequate consensus. (House Speaker Thomas P. ''Tip'' O'Neill made sure some of that federal money was snapped up for the Big Dig.)
To avoid Westway's dismal fate, planners turned to what Altshuler and Luberoff call ''do no harm'' public works. Under this new approach, they bought off local resistance with promises of soundproofing, parks, and new rail lines. And every promise busted the budget a bit more. In the case of the Big Dig, planners estimated in the 1990s that mitigation accounted for roughly one-third of the total budget-not counting hundreds of millions more in ancillary projects, including transit and commuter rail.
Another major factor in the cost run-ups and delays, Altshuler and Luberoff say, is the sheer technical complexity of today's megaprojects, which are all essentially custom jobs. Highway engineers know what to do when they encounter ledge; the process has been repeated hundreds of times. But freezing the soil above a tunnel network so train tracks won't collapse? Finding an Ice Age boulder blocking a planned bus line across Fort Point Channel? That's just not something hard hats see every day.
Throw in the pressure to get megaprojects underway before all design solutions can be 100 percent completed, the authors say, and the result is that budgets bear little resemblance to initial promises.
In the climate of skepticism created by Big Dig-style overruns and delays, civic pride is curdling into civic buzz-kill across the country. In Seattle, residents are dubious about cost projections for the massive Alaskan Way viaduct project-the replacement of an aging elevated highway that cuts the city off from its waterfront (sound familiar?). They are also threatening to roll back funding for the Sound Transit light rail line. In Chicago, the price tag for the O'Hare airport expansion plan has crept up substantially. In Los Angeles, where the $4.5 billion Red Line subway prompted jokes that it would have been cheaper to buy every rider their own SUV to get around town, planners are having difficulty selling the proposed $1.8 billion Alameda Corridor rail project.
In Massachusetts, Governor Mitt Romney wants to promote development within the urban core of Boston as part of a broad anti-sprawl agenda. His transportation planners are fond of such projects as a proposed underground connection allowing Silver Line buses to reach South Station, and then continue on to the South Boston Waterfront on the Transitway and ultimately to Logan Airport (price tag: $952 million). They also like the idea of a $2.8 billion Urban Ring bus corridor, which would run through six communities and link metropolitan Boston's radiating rail and transit lines.
But scarce resources and megaproject fatigue will make it difficult for the Romney team to push ahead with those proposals, especially as other ambitions-an underground rail link between North and South stations, the Greenbush commuter line through the South Shore, and the New Bedford-Fall River commuter rail extension-may have to be put on the back burner. (The administration is scrambling to find ways to build Greenbush for less than $600 million, in part by scaling back the mitigation efforts.)
The future of some megaprojects will begin to get sorted out in Washington this summer, as Congress reauthorizes the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century-the funding program for highways, bridges, rail, and transit. The nation's cities will be watching and waiting with particular anxiety. The architects of America's urban revival say that projects like the Urban Ring are essential for making metropolitan areas function properly, just as highways enabled suburban development through the last half of the 20th century. For them, it's a lousy time for patience to wear thin. Yet as Altshuler and Luberoff explain in such rich detail, it's hard to keep dreaming big when the big bills come due.
The Boston Globe
By Anthony Flint
Obstacle course
Has the Big Dig killed off the urban megaproject?
5/18/2003
With its glowing, gently curving tunnel deep beneath the city, punctuated by the obelisk peaks and bright white cables of the Zakim Bridge, the Big Dig has become a symbol of triumphant engineering and urban reinvention. But after two decades of delays and cost overruns, it also stands as a kind of $14.6 billion tombstone for the contemporary megaproject-one that bears a cautionary inscription for planners and politicians from Seattle to Atlanta: Don't try this at home.
The Big Dig, however, is merely the biggest and most dramatic example of the twists and turns facing today's megaprojects-the modern-day versions of the Verrazano Bridge or Hoover Dam. Escalating costs, complications and delays are pretty much guaranteed in major public works projects these days, according to Alan Altshuler, a professor of urban policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and David Luberoff, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. They are the authors of ''Megaprojects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment,'' published this month by the Brookings Institution Press.
The typical megaproject today is in a complicated setting-an existing urban area-that tends to be chock-full of engineering surprises. Design blueprints are rarely fully completed before construction starts, and changes are made on the fly. Neighborhood disruption must be minimized, an expensive exercise known as ''mitigation.'' And to win essential public support, planners end up promising that other, smaller and sometimes unrelated projects will also get done. The process ends up becoming a vicious circle, the authors suggest, in which the efforts to make megaprojects palatable lead to delays and cost overruns, which makes the public even warier than they were to begin with.
Altshuler and Luberoff (the former served as Governor Francis Sargent's state transportation secretary from 1971-74) don't pronounce the death of all megaprojects. But with money short and homeland security costs mounting, they believe such projects may not get much consideration in the near-term. That's particularly bad news for urban areas, where the ''smart growth'' movement is counting on massive investment in megaprojects to make city living a more viable alternative to the suburbs. In an era of shrinking budgets and skeptical citizens, there may soon be a whole lot of vision downsizing going on.
It wasn't always so hard to build big. Before the 1970s, when there were complications, like a neighborhood being in the way, master planners like Robert Moses made sure the projects got done regardless. In Massachusetts, the Moses figure was William Callahan, who gave the state Route 128, the Massachusetts Turnpike and the Callahan tunnel to East Boston, which complemented the existing Sumner tube.
The Mass. Pike is a fine example of how easy megaprojects used to be. Engineers mapped out the route, took the land, and poured the concrete. Even the slightly more complicated turnpike extension into downtown Boston was free of overruns, says Yanni Tsipis, author of ''Building the Mass Pike'' (2002). The 123-mile ''lifeline of Massachusetts,'' completed in 1957, took only seven years.
By the end of the 1960s, however, things started to get complicated. Inspired by the likes of Jane Jacobs, city dwellers rose up and fought against urban renewal, slum clearance, and proposals for highways rammed through inner cities. The revolt came too late for Boston's West End, which was demolished starting in the `50s, but it did put a stop to the planned Southwest Expressway and Inner Belt highways.
The near-term result was a renewed focus on mass transit, specifically the extension of the Red Line and the construction of the Orange Line along the Southwest Corridor. But the long-term implication was that no dirt could be shoveled without broad public support. New York's fabled Westway-the extension of the West Side Highway to Lower Manhattan under a deck of parklands and development along the Hudson River-was finally scrapped in 1985 because there was no adequate consensus. (House Speaker Thomas P. ''Tip'' O'Neill made sure some of that federal money was snapped up for the Big Dig.)
To avoid Westway's dismal fate, planners turned to what Altshuler and Luberoff call ''do no harm'' public works. Under this new approach, they bought off local resistance with promises of soundproofing, parks, and new rail lines. And every promise busted the budget a bit more. In the case of the Big Dig, planners estimated in the 1990s that mitigation accounted for roughly one-third of the total budget-not counting hundreds of millions more in ancillary projects, including transit and commuter rail.
Another major factor in the cost run-ups and delays, Altshuler and Luberoff say, is the sheer technical complexity of today's megaprojects, which are all essentially custom jobs. Highway engineers know what to do when they encounter ledge; the process has been repeated hundreds of times. But freezing the soil above a tunnel network so train tracks won't collapse? Finding an Ice Age boulder blocking a planned bus line across Fort Point Channel? That's just not something hard hats see every day.
Throw in the pressure to get megaprojects underway before all design solutions can be 100 percent completed, the authors say, and the result is that budgets bear little resemblance to initial promises.
In the climate of skepticism created by Big Dig-style overruns and delays, civic pride is curdling into civic buzz-kill across the country. In Seattle, residents are dubious about cost projections for the massive Alaskan Way viaduct project-the replacement of an aging elevated highway that cuts the city off from its waterfront (sound familiar?). They are also threatening to roll back funding for the Sound Transit light rail line. In Chicago, the price tag for the O'Hare airport expansion plan has crept up substantially. In Los Angeles, where the $4.5 billion Red Line subway prompted jokes that it would have been cheaper to buy every rider their own SUV to get around town, planners are having difficulty selling the proposed $1.8 billion Alameda Corridor rail project.
In Massachusetts, Governor Mitt Romney wants to promote development within the urban core of Boston as part of a broad anti-sprawl agenda. His transportation planners are fond of such projects as a proposed underground connection allowing Silver Line buses to reach South Station, and then continue on to the South Boston Waterfront on the Transitway and ultimately to Logan Airport (price tag: $952 million). They also like the idea of a $2.8 billion Urban Ring bus corridor, which would run through six communities and link metropolitan Boston's radiating rail and transit lines.
But scarce resources and megaproject fatigue will make it difficult for the Romney team to push ahead with those proposals, especially as other ambitions-an underground rail link between North and South stations, the Greenbush commuter line through the South Shore, and the New Bedford-Fall River commuter rail extension-may have to be put on the back burner. (The administration is scrambling to find ways to build Greenbush for less than $600 million, in part by scaling back the mitigation efforts.)
The future of some megaprojects will begin to get sorted out in Washington this summer, as Congress reauthorizes the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century-the funding program for highways, bridges, rail, and transit. The nation's cities will be watching and waiting with particular anxiety. The architects of America's urban revival say that projects like the Urban Ring are essential for making metropolitan areas function properly, just as highways enabled suburban development through the last half of the 20th century. For them, it's a lousy time for patience to wear thin. Yet as Altshuler and Luberoff explain in such rich detail, it's hard to keep dreaming big when the big bills come due.