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Cost Overruns for Boston's Big Dig Mean Little When You Look at the Value it Brings
By Gary Brierley
It's obvious from reading the newspapers that Boston's
massive Big Dig project is approaching completion, as 20/20 hindsight
articles about cost overruns are becoming a regular feature. For the uninitiated,
the project involves burying Beantown's notorious Interstate-93, which
sliced through the city on an elevated steel structure, underground beneath
subway lines and also extending I-90 to Logan Airport. Built in the 1950s,
the previous highway structure, known affectionately as the Green Monster,
separated neighborhoods and isolated the downtown from the waterfront,
and as anyone who has driven it knows, its tight turns and lack of shoulders
could fray even the steadiest nerves.
Fortunately, just like street closures and project detours, the naysaying articles are a passing phase of the project primarily because the best measure of project success is not cost, but value. Does the average citizen of Massachusetts really care what it cost to build Quabbin Reservoir, the Massachusetts Turnpike, Logan Airport or the Boston subway system dating all the way back to 1897? Although each of these projects have their problems, these and thousands of other construction projects, both public and private, continue to produce billions of dollars of value for the citizens of Massachusetts.
Clearly, the political process whereby public resources are allocated to competing interests such as highways, water supply projects, transit systems, or environmental initiatives is complex and highly contentious. This process, however, for better or worse, resulted in a decision to build the Big Dig, and the most important question that needs to be answered now is whether or not the citizens of Massachusetts will be happy to have the Big Dig in 25 years. What is the value of removing the Green Monster from the landscape of Boston and providing improved north/south and east/west access through the center of downtown Boston? Although, there are as many answers to this question as there are taxpayers in Massachusetts, only time will tell us the true value of the Big Dig as it goes into service.
If and when someone takes the time to write an exhaustive article examining the costs of the Big Dig, they should look at the cost of having done nothing. Try to pretend a decision was made not to build the Big Dig and try to imagine the nature of newspaper articles about the impact on Massachusetts of the rotting hulk of a Green Monster cutting through the heart of downtown Boston. The cost of doing nothing might be small, but the value of doing nothing is a huge and overwhelming negative! Many studies have shown that economic progress is tied directly to infrastructure improvements, and this is without a doubt the most basic value associated with construction activities.
Gary Brierley is president of Brierley Associates, LLC, a geotechnical engineering firm in Boston
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