ince the Ted Williams Tunnel opened to commercial traffic in December 1995, many significant milestones have been reached on Boston’s Central Artery project, better known in the Hub and beyond as "The Big Dig." Perhaps the most significant milestone to date came earlier this year, when officials announced that work for the entire project was 50 percent complete.

With the halfway point now reached, excitement is building. Boston’s new eight to ten lane Central Artery and a system of improved ramps, bridges, and tunnels, is just a few years from becoming a reality. The Big Dig has received national attention of late – it was the subject of a History Channel special in March and an article in USA Today in May – as a model to replace outdated road systems and rejuvenate aging urban areas. In fact, officials in Detroit, Denver, Dallas, Chicago, and St. Louis are watching the work that Modern Continental and other contractors are doing in Boston as they plan for massive roadway reconstruction projects in their respective cities.  

Boston's Big Dig Panorama

The Big Dig is becoming a model for urban revitalization and positioning Boston for the new millennium.

Since the Big Dig is already well underway, the city has a head start on other cities in the same predicament of aging roadways. "Boston," because of the project, "is positioned to be the jewel of American cities in the next century," urban planning expert Bruce Katz told USA Today. Others have praised the Big Dig for its plan to make the once-marginal sections of Boston’s waterfront more accessible from the rest of the city, as the elevated highway now in place forms a geographical barrier of sorts to Boston Harbor. Where the current Artery now stands will be 27 acres of new downtown space, three-quarters of which will remain open when the project is completed. The Big Dig is the most extensive public works project in U.S. history, and it also boasts a number of other "first" and "largest" titles. For example:

The South Boston connection (or interface) between the underwater section of the Ted Williams Tunnel and the land-based approach was built in the widest and deepest circular cofferdam (a watertight structure from which water is pumped so that construction can take place inside) in North America. A ventilation building was built inside the cofferdam.

The Ted Williams Tunnel interface in East Boston, between the land-based approach and the underwater portion, is the deepest such connection in North America.
State to North Street

DEEP BELOW GROUND: Work is progressing at the I-93 Central Artery State to North Street job, one of our Big Dig contracts. Above, workers tie steel bars to fortify concrete that will be poured into the tunnel, which, in some places, is more than 100 feet below the surface. Eventually, this will be the northbound lane of I-93 near Quincy Market.

 
The project’s seven-building ventilation system will be the largest highway tunnel vent system in the world.

Traffic using the Metropolitan Highway System (including the underground Central Artery, the Ted Williams Tunnel, and the Mass Turnpike out to Route 128/95) will be monitored by the most advanced traffic management and incident response systems in the world. This will include more than 400 video cameras, 130 electronic message signs, 30 infrared height detectors, and six emergency response stations in operation 24 hours-a-day. Radio and cellular phone signals will be rebroadcast into the tunnels.

 

More about the historic Big Dig here
 

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