What is The Big Dig?

Post date: Sep 12, 2017 2:39:52 PM

The Big Dig was a project in Boston that sought to fix an extremely congested highway area. It replaced the six lane I-93 Interstate, called the Central Artery which ran through the heart of the city, with an eight to ten lane underground highway.

The traffic problem in this area was severe and predicted to become much worse. When the Central Artery was opened in 1959 about 75k vehicles per day would travel on it, but by the early 90s that number increased to upwards of 200k. Stop and go traffic lasted for about 10 hours a day and it was predicted that by 2010 it would last for 16 hours a day. There were also four times as many accidents on this highway as there were on average highways of comparable size.

This project was particularly challenging due to both environmental impacts and Boston's complicated infrastructure. This was also the first time a project of this size had been attempted in an urban area, so it had to be completed without devastating the city.

Overall, construction took about fifteen years, beginning in September 1991 and being declared "substantially completed" in January 2006.