Big Dig: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

"Dec 31 2007 marks the end of the terminally inept Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff project management joint venture at the Massachusetts Turnpike's Big Dig project. How such stellar companies could mismanage construction so totally is difficult to explain except in terms of the Turnpike's perverse structuring of the incentives - the send-us-the-bills-whatever deal which meant that the more B/PB screwed up the more they earned."

... "The project was soundly conceived and is delivering substantial transportation benefits. That's because Fred Salvucci's concept of replacing the old elevated with a higher capacity underground facility was excellent. Not only does the new facility have more travel lanes - 8 or 10 vs 6 previously - but it applies modern traffic engineering principles to minimize turbulence from the merges and the diverges of the expressway... The motorist benefits of all this have been studied and quantified, and they are huge."