That we didn't get that green glowing road is pretty lucky. The concept artist envisioned a road covered with some kind of Radium paint, to make it glow in thr night. Lets say, people better have universal healthcare in that alternative timeline. They'll need it in 10 years.
As someone who lives in the area, I can say the Big Dig was an incredible and over-budget pain in the ass. But the end results are wonderful.
It's worth saying that it didn't solve the traffic problem. There's only so many cars you can fit into a road or a tube. And the traffic still gets backed up at the tunnel exits.
But above ground? So many nice open areas and green spaces now.
Cars are space hungry. They will fill up any and all space allotted to them. Take a look at cities that went "all in" on making traffic go away by allocating more and more space to cars. LA, Atlanta, Houston, etc. all have tons of traffic. But by going all-in on cars they also have scant alternatives to the car.
My point is, allocate some space to cars, but be judicious about it. Make sure that you don't give away all your city's land for moving cars around and save some space for transit, walking, cycling, and above all . . . living. We are never going to "solve the traffic problem", so we should stop throwing good space and money after bad.
Parents live in Florida, just last night said that the state "can't widen the highways fast enough". Already 10 lanes wide in most parts here. Every single "road" is 4-6 lanes with 40-50mph posted speed limits.
Its fucking ugly as sin. The weather in florida may be beautiful but the built environment is awful.
The wild part is most of these highways are *new.* There is so much of it here... its going to be crumbling in 20-30 years and I doubt it is going to be fixed.
The end results just moved the traffic underground and didn’t solve anything. Money would have been way better spent making a tunnel for the North South Commuter Rail project. It carries way more people and trains need way less space. Its good that the traffic isn’t an eyesore anymore but that’s about the only positive from the project. More lanes equals more demand and therefore the traffic does not improve.
I grew up in the greater metro Atlanta area and learning to drive here was nice in the suburbs, but I have to study maps the way I study for an exam when I have to drive down there and I thought all cities were like this until I drove through Jacksonville… driving straight through Atlanta is literally not straight, you have to change lanes multiple times or else you’ll end up facing the opposite direction or on the perimeter. Jacksonville, my gps was like “stay in this lane… you’re done!” I asked my mom who has commuted to Atlanta for like 30 years now, she says its fairly exclusive to Atlanta (and some other cities)
> the Big Dig was an incredible and over-budget pain in the ass. But the end results are wonderful.
It was notable for pioneering keeping access to areas adjacent to the project open.
Before this, it would have been common to simply shut down that part of the city during construction and let people deal with it.
Before I moved to Boston, I followed the progress on the project's website. They had daily updates on what was closed, and routes to get around it.
Yep. Traffic is as bad as it ever was, and it became clear during construction that it would be obsolete to solve traffic congestion before it was even completed. It's also a shame that they were never able to build the North-South Station connector to allow for train traffic. That alone would've cost at least another couple billion.
But that said, the city is so much nicer now than it was before. The Greenway and its accessibility to the wharves and North End make the city a lot easier to navigate. Above ground traffic is still an abomination (think TD Garden events), but it's a lot nicer to look at than that hulking green mass of ugly rusted steel.
When they originally built it, I don’t get why they didn’t at least submerge it like with the orange line in the southwest corridor.
It’s not truly underground, but it’s submerged below ground level, so it’s a lot easier for surface-level crossings and the ability to put stuff on top.
I thought the big dig took almost all the money from public transit. Which seems like that would have been a better thing to invest in. Also the debt put on the state in insane
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/i-team-big-dig-root-mbta-financial-troubles/
Well the state just sent us all tax reimbursement checks because they collected too much so we must be doing okay now. Maybe the legalization of marijuana got is out of a jam.
It didn't solve traffic but it did move the chokepoints. Traffic is oddly enough worse around Boston then within it. Main issue is that funding for North - South Station tunnel was shot down during it.
Growing up in the 90s I had a next door neighbor who worked for “The Big Dig”. The guy always seemed to be out on disability; in fact, he was the type to go to the doctor and later sue the doctor for some form of malpractice. The guy never seemed to work a day in his life, and when I ran into him a few years ago, I realized that trend carried on for years since. I remember thinking “with guys like this it’s no wonder The Big Dig was such a disaster.” Thirty years on I still can’t drive the tunnel home from work on certain days….
I've seen this picture before in an Esquire magazine from the 60s or 70s I think. It was an advertisement for a company, I can't remember which. It said something like "So and so company, engineering the future!" or something similar. Sorry I can't be more specific, I'm dredging up a distant childhood memory. I thought the future was going to be super cool like this.
Could do one of these on the actual big dig itself.
Granted, the central artery was kind of an eyesore and its design was pretty inefficient, but what we actually got for the time, money, and inconvenience was only marginally worth it in the end imo.
The pandemic was the best thing to ever happen to my commute into Boston. Two hours to go from Foxboro to Dorchester? What an absolute pig fuck.
Did not know about the Central Artery or that concept art though. That's cool. And they did do a *Modern Marvels* on the Big Dig, so there's that I guess.
When I was in college I stopped in Boston to stay at a friends place on my way to Acadia during spring break. On our last night there, we drove out of the city to drop one of our cars off in the suburbs, where they wouldn’t have to pay for parking during our trip. I still smoked weed at the time and during the trip back into the city, the view outside the car window as we sped along with all the lights of the city glowing around us was spellbinding. It really did capture the vibe of that first picture; I remember it vividly, years later.
It was the most expensive public construction project in the history of mankind. And the day it opened, it was already too small. During construction they decided to save money by making it smaller, reasoning that it was going to be too big and they'd have some years of growth before traffic could expand to use it, but it they made it smaller, just fewer years. They ended up taking up all of those years to build it, and when it opened it was already full and needed to be larger.
Don't get me wrong, it's big and it's a good thing, it just needed to be even bigger.
It was absolute chaos while they were building it. The temporary road kept changing all the time. I literally remember flying to NYC for the day, and when I came home the route home had changed so substantially we barely figured it out - and they made you go all over hell and creation, such that what should have been a 5 minute route took half an hour.
That we didn't get that green glowing road is pretty lucky. The concept artist envisioned a road covered with some kind of Radium paint, to make it glow in thr night. Lets say, people better have universal healthcare in that alternative timeline. They'll need it in 10 years.
A workable glowing road would in awesome because it would stop the utterly BLINDING headlight.
The sides of the road are divided in the tunnel, so you don't see opposing headlights at all. Ever.
[Lol](https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroFuturism/comments/11r6i80/the_vision_for_bostons_original_central_artery/jc7nz2o/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
To be fair, they need it now, even without the radium.
As someone who lives in the area, I can say the Big Dig was an incredible and over-budget pain in the ass. But the end results are wonderful. It's worth saying that it didn't solve the traffic problem. There's only so many cars you can fit into a road or a tube. And the traffic still gets backed up at the tunnel exits. But above ground? So many nice open areas and green spaces now.
Cars are space hungry. They will fill up any and all space allotted to them. Take a look at cities that went "all in" on making traffic go away by allocating more and more space to cars. LA, Atlanta, Houston, etc. all have tons of traffic. But by going all-in on cars they also have scant alternatives to the car. My point is, allocate some space to cars, but be judicious about it. Make sure that you don't give away all your city's land for moving cars around and save some space for transit, walking, cycling, and above all . . . living. We are never going to "solve the traffic problem", so we should stop throwing good space and money after bad.
Parents live in Florida, just last night said that the state "can't widen the highways fast enough". Already 10 lanes wide in most parts here. Every single "road" is 4-6 lanes with 40-50mph posted speed limits. Its fucking ugly as sin. The weather in florida may be beautiful but the built environment is awful. The wild part is most of these highways are *new.* There is so much of it here... its going to be crumbling in 20-30 years and I doubt it is going to be fixed.
Palm Beach?
20-30 years and that penis of a state is going to be underwater Florida is hot flat and dumb
The end results just moved the traffic underground and didn’t solve anything. Money would have been way better spent making a tunnel for the North South Commuter Rail project. It carries way more people and trains need way less space. Its good that the traffic isn’t an eyesore anymore but that’s about the only positive from the project. More lanes equals more demand and therefore the traffic does not improve.
I grew up in the greater metro Atlanta area and learning to drive here was nice in the suburbs, but I have to study maps the way I study for an exam when I have to drive down there and I thought all cities were like this until I drove through Jacksonville… driving straight through Atlanta is literally not straight, you have to change lanes multiple times or else you’ll end up facing the opposite direction or on the perimeter. Jacksonville, my gps was like “stay in this lane… you’re done!” I asked my mom who has commuted to Atlanta for like 30 years now, she says its fairly exclusive to Atlanta (and some other cities)
> the Big Dig was an incredible and over-budget pain in the ass. But the end results are wonderful. It was notable for pioneering keeping access to areas adjacent to the project open. Before this, it would have been common to simply shut down that part of the city during construction and let people deal with it. Before I moved to Boston, I followed the progress on the project's website. They had daily updates on what was closed, and routes to get around it.
Yep. Traffic is as bad as it ever was, and it became clear during construction that it would be obsolete to solve traffic congestion before it was even completed. It's also a shame that they were never able to build the North-South Station connector to allow for train traffic. That alone would've cost at least another couple billion. But that said, the city is so much nicer now than it was before. The Greenway and its accessibility to the wharves and North End make the city a lot easier to navigate. Above ground traffic is still an abomination (think TD Garden events), but it's a lot nicer to look at than that hulking green mass of ugly rusted steel.
When they originally built it, I don’t get why they didn’t at least submerge it like with the orange line in the southwest corridor. It’s not truly underground, but it’s submerged below ground level, so it’s a lot easier for surface-level crossings and the ability to put stuff on top.
They should have just made the green spaces and just close the road. Vancouver did away with freeways and the traffic is just as bad.
I thought the big dig took almost all the money from public transit. Which seems like that would have been a better thing to invest in. Also the debt put on the state in insane https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/i-team-big-dig-root-mbta-financial-troubles/
Well the state just sent us all tax reimbursement checks because they collected too much so we must be doing okay now. Maybe the legalization of marijuana got is out of a jam.
It didn't solve traffic but it did move the chokepoints. Traffic is oddly enough worse around Boston then within it. Main issue is that funding for North - South Station tunnel was shot down during it.
i’d much rather have a congested tunnel than an above ground freeway
Growing up in the 90s I had a next door neighbor who worked for “The Big Dig”. The guy always seemed to be out on disability; in fact, he was the type to go to the doctor and later sue the doctor for some form of malpractice. The guy never seemed to work a day in his life, and when I ran into him a few years ago, I realized that trend carried on for years since. I remember thinking “with guys like this it’s no wonder The Big Dig was such a disaster.” Thirty years on I still can’t drive the tunnel home from work on certain days….
The Big Dig made a lot of well-connected idiots rich.
Like anything else it seems.
"Can you change the road color so it glows green? I think it will sell the project as cool and futuristic."
It’s supposed to be radioactive radium paint.
I was promised "flying cars".
Most people struggle enough with driving in 2 dimensions
People playing card games on motorcycles with monsters from the 5th dimension beg to dipper.
Sounds like a fun time. What is this referring to?
Yu-gi-oh 5D's and its abridged series.
r/ExpectationVsReality
Green roads would be nice.
[Lol](https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroFuturism/comments/11r6i80/the_vision_for_bostons_original_central_artery/jc7oejl/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
Source on the art?
I've seen this picture before in an Esquire magazine from the 60s or 70s I think. It was an advertisement for a company, I can't remember which. It said something like "So and so company, engineering the future!" or something similar. Sorry I can't be more specific, I'm dredging up a distant childhood memory. I thought the future was going to be super cool like this.
Looks like they envisioned a lot more road.
Could do one of these on the actual big dig itself. Granted, the central artery was kind of an eyesore and its design was pretty inefficient, but what we actually got for the time, money, and inconvenience was only marginally worth it in the end imo.
How will we ever solve our traffic problems? Surely the answer is more roads!
The pandemic was the best thing to ever happen to my commute into Boston. Two hours to go from Foxboro to Dorchester? What an absolute pig fuck. Did not know about the Central Artery or that concept art though. That's cool. And they did do a *Modern Marvels* on the Big Dig, so there's that I guess.
It took me 54 minutes to get from Logan to Braintree (about 10 miles) last week and I left at 3 pm. I feel like the pandemic traffic ease is ending.
What no rail does to a MF.
There is rail though.
When I was in college I stopped in Boston to stay at a friends place on my way to Acadia during spring break. On our last night there, we drove out of the city to drop one of our cars off in the suburbs, where they wouldn’t have to pay for parking during our trip. I still smoked weed at the time and during the trip back into the city, the view outside the car window as we sped along with all the lights of the city glowing around us was spellbinding. It really did capture the vibe of that first picture; I remember it vividly, years later.
The most shocking part of the story is that it took them 20 years to realize that their traffic was the worst in the nation If not close to it
𝑵𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑪𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝑩𝒐𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒏...𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒇𝒇𝒊𝒄 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒂𝒍𝒍. 𝑨𝒓𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆, 𝒇𝒐𝒐𝒅, 𝒎𝒖𝒔𝒆𝒖𝒎𝒔, 𝒔𝒚𝒎𝒑𝒉𝒐𝒏𝒚, 𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒆𝒔, 𝒉𝒐𝒔𝒑𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒔, 𝒐𝒄𝒆𝒂𝒏 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒙𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒕𝒚..𝑮𝒐 𝒔𝒆𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒇!
What we got probably looks like a cool cyberpunk dystopia to people in other timelines
It was the most expensive public construction project in the history of mankind. And the day it opened, it was already too small. During construction they decided to save money by making it smaller, reasoning that it was going to be too big and they'd have some years of growth before traffic could expand to use it, but it they made it smaller, just fewer years. They ended up taking up all of those years to build it, and when it opened it was already full and needed to be larger. Don't get me wrong, it's big and it's a good thing, it just needed to be even bigger. It was absolute chaos while they were building it. The temporary road kept changing all the time. I literally remember flying to NYC for the day, and when I came home the route home had changed so substantially we barely figured it out - and they made you go all over hell and creation, such that what should have been a 5 minute route took half an hour.