The big hole in Ma.

I've been meaning to whine... I mean blog about the big dig here for some time. To me the Big Dig might've started as a simple boondoggle by St. Tip( O'Neil) as a way for MA. to get a slice of government cheese but it's ended up as an unsafe black hole of money thanks to mismanagement and companies bilking the government out of billions. Yes not millions but billions.
Boiled down the idea sounds mid level difficult for the late 20th century. You take an out of date bridge and highway and put them UNDERground and underWATER- making tunnels where the bridge and highway was. It's cool because you can then expand the highway as you build- having more lanes... I would think as a lay person that that hardest thing was making sure that the highway was available for most of this- i.e. not closing anything. Though to be fair they decided to add to the difficulty by deciding to sink some above ground trains while they were at it- still I would say not the most difficult piece of construction. Tunnels had been done before and the scale wasn't impossible.

However it's recently rained gravel in the tunnels and the tunnels leak. Heck the fact that the government HAD to come out with a report to say the tunnel is safe, tells you what poor shape they are.

It also should be noted that when approved it was suppose to cost $2.6 billion and has ended up costing $14.6 billion. It was 'suppose' to be finished 7 years ago but since it's leaking- lord knows when it'll be over.

There are many things that bother me about this- starting with the fact that I don't drive so feel that money could be spent better. I mean think about how much affordable housing you could create with that money, how many homeless you could feed or even teachers you could hire with that much money.
Then there's Bechtel- by my readings and the amount of investigations they fleeced us... I mean how do you have a 561% cost over run and still end up with a sub standard product??? Worse to me is that the U.S. federal government is still giving work to Bechtel after this mismanagement. Bechtel seems to be as 'golden' as Haliburton... as they've been given contracts in Iraq- which they haven't lived up to , and are still getting government contracts.

I think this was a bad idea but good for the local economy when it started- Now as stated it's a black hole of money... yours and mine that could've been better spent- and instead a bunch of fat cats got fatter producing a sub standard item for the 'little people'
( I should mention that the governor here before Mitt got in trouble for using a STATE helicopter for her commute... instead of a car like the rest of us)