Originally Posted by djplong

Let me shed a little light.

First off, comparisons to Boston's Big Dig are, to put it midly, unfair. To put it reasonably, they're delusional. I'll explain later.

Secondly, the Tampa to Orlando leg was the START. The project was specifically chosen so that there could be an example up and running as soon as possible. This was always intended to be part of a larger plan, akin to the old FOX plan (FLorida Overland eXpress) to connect much more of Florida via high speed rail. The theory went that, once people got a taste of Tampa to Orlando, an extension to Miami would be built. ANyone who's ridden a train in Europe can tell you the appeal. [Especially in light of the actions of the Court Jesters who run the TSA]

Now, the reasons behind why the Big Dig comparisons are unfair. I'll hit some bullet points.

The original $2B estimate was for depressing the Central Artery (I-93) ONLY. And that estimate was made in the late 1970s. There's been some inflation since then.

There were political arguments about funding EITHER depressing I-93 OR extending I-90 (the Mass. Turnpike) from Boston to Logan Airport via a 3rd harbor tunnel. The "compromise" was to do both (pay off both legislator's interests).

The Ted Williams Tunnel (I-90 to Logan Airport) came in ahead of schedule and under budget.

Massachusetts was inundated with extortion requests from people who said construction would ruin them. Spaulding Rehab Hospital tried to blackmail MA into buying their hospital near North Station, saying that patients would die because parking would be more difficult during construction and that would drive visitors away. They wanted the state to buy not only the hospital site but to finance their relocation to another site in Newton. Another example was a shelter that used an abandoned building (the business was bought out by the state and left when the agreement was made, which was years before construction came to their area). They were told it was temporary. When the construction schedule caught up with them, they demanded the state pay to move them, even though they knew fmro the get-go that this was temporary. There was a lot of what they called "mitigation". I called it "blackmail".

The pricetag is actually $14.5B. The $20B+ numbers are including the interest on many of the bonds for the next 20 years.

Most importantly, construction didn't go as planned. They had to invent NEW KINDS of construction. The wildest of which was the Fort Point CHannel Tunnel. They had to tunnel UNDER an existing rail mainline that saw hundreds of Amtrak and MBTA commuter rail trains per day. In addition, they had to go OVER the MBTA Red Line subway tunnel - which they had to tunnel UNDER for the I-93 northbound tunnel. The soil turned out to be VERY unstable so they INVENTED a methodology where they injected liquid nitrogen filled pipes into the ground, froze it solid, built the tunnel 'boxes' and JACKED them horizontally UNDER the several rail tracks and OVER the Red Line tunnel. It's an UNBELIEVABLE piece of engineering. Nowadays it's considered the 'standard' way to stabilize soil for thee kinds of projects.

You have no idea of what the scope of this project was at the end compared to the beginning. It's a pretty unreal case of "feature creep" in all honesty but there were some amazing things that happened. Of course, not all the contractors did their job and a ceiling panel fell and killed a motorist. IMO, Parsons Brinkerhoff was never suitably punished for their willful negligence (they knew bolts were substandard and their methods were insufficient for attaching the panels and went ahead and did it anyway).

We KNOW how to build rail lines. The widening of I-4 was done RESERVING SPACE for it so you would be FAR less likely to have cost overruns. This is baby-food stuff in a climate that is construction-friendly year-round.

I find it interesting that Scott pushes more roads yet doesn't mention the increased subsidies THOSE will entail. We've LONG since gone over the budget of what the gas tax can pay for.