Amorello Resigns!

Amorello finally resigns after 2 more weeks of ineffective leadership and 2 deaths in the tunnel system. Oh yeah, did I mention he spent $1 million in taxpayer money defending his quarter million dollar job? Good riddance.

Boston Globe - Amorello agrees to resign
Boston Herald - One Final Misstep for Matt

Another needless tragedy

A heart attack victim died on the way to the hospital from Logan due to the bad traffic in the tunnels. Normally, a 4 minute car ride turned into a 24 minute logjam that resulted in the man's death.

The Central Artery project needs to be taken over by competent people and the Mass Pike Authority should go back to collecting tolls (or better yet, completely abolished, along with the tolls).

Engineering Forum

I found a series of forum postings where some engineers are talking about ceiling collapse. An interesting read from a more expert/professional point of view.

Eng-Tips

News Update...

Road Status:
So, nothing much new with the current status of the roads. No new openings of roads or anything.

Investigation Status:
Mostly mum at this point, on the I-90 connector but some bad news about the Ted Williams Tunnel.

• Latest news ... 6/25 - Ted Williams Tunnel: More bad bolts , this time on the Westbound entrance to the Ted Williams Tunnel - 3 bad bolts, one 1/2 an inch. (Globe)
• Ted Williams Tunnel Herald Bombshell: Technician witnessed bolt failures and took pictures - Installers improperly installed the epoxy bolts. Incorrect methods still used even after being reprimanded. A new name to add to list: Walsh Construction Company
• Ted Williams Tunnel Mistakes - Bolts kept in place with duct tape (holds the universe together afterall) due to mistakes in prep work (holes too deep, bolts too short, epoxy not mixed properly). Walsh complained about voids in the ceiling concrete. Could this be because we have bad concrete?

Political Scene:
However, the political scene is heating up.

• Mitt Romney appoints a new Mass Pike Authority board member due to a mistake in his prior appointment (political balance of the board). This new member is a friend of Romney's rather than someone with road/highway experience. How? The person chosen is Judy Pagliuca, her husband is the managing director of Bain Capital, the company Romney founded. Why? Just so happens, she never enrolled to vote, so no political party association and a friendly face. Objectively, though, she does have a mechanical engineering degree.
• In bigger news... Matt Amorello sues to keep his quarter-million dollar job (Globe). Herald version here. If Amorello wins his case, and he stays as the chairman, the public will be outraged and dismayed.

Will update the links soon for all the players.

Ted Williams Tunnel Eastbound Reopened

The eastbound Ted Williams Tunnel reopened on Friday morning at 7 AM to buses.

The MBTA Silver Line bus service is running normally to the airport via the Ted Williams Tunnel.

Details here.

Still waiting for the opening of the onramp to the Ted Williams Tunnel for car traffic from South Boston.

Now for the tunnel...

OK, now the eastbound side of the Ted Williams Tunnel is now shut down. This was due to bolts that were pulled out of the ceiling, one of the pulled 1" and another pulled 0.5" out in the Ted Williams Tunnel eastbound. This is detouring the Silver Line bus route that goes to the airport via the Ted Williams Tunnel.

The shutdown should only be for "hours, not days." The Mass Pike Authority had previously cleared the tunnel as safe. Romney said that the action may be a bit of an overreaction but public safety does come first. From the question and answer session, it seemed that they immediately closed the tunnel once it was discovered and not all the politicians were notified (although the T was notified since they run the Silver Line through there).

I agree with the shutdown, even if it is a bit of an overreaction. I think the public is willing to tolerate shutdowns if it means we won't have another disaster. While it looks bad, what looks worse is another disaster in an area that was cleared by the Mass Pike Authority (which wouldn't be surprising for most of us).

Just not a great month for us drivers...

Well, the water main break in the South End on Mass Ave seems to have made our collective traffic nightmare go from bad to worse. Add to that a tractor-trailer flip on the Mass Pike West and we've got a real mess on our hands. Oh yeah, the Sox game just let out too.

One saving grace is that this didn't happen in the dead of winter when there's a predicted 12" of snow for the evening commute.

Public Works Projects...

This whole debacle has me reminded me of a quote by Alan Shepard, first American in space:

"It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realise that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract."

Well, I suppose that can be said of all government projects. Some projects are more accountable to the tax paying public than others and hopefully the safety factor greater, even if it is the lowest bidder on a government contract.

Don't jump off the Tobin Bridge...

... you're just crossing it to get to Logan Airport.

There's a new detour in town to get to the airport from I-93 South and the Mass Pike. The exit 26 detour has been eliminated. Instead of going on surface streets by North Station, a new detour will now bring you onto I-93 N and then over the Tobin Bridge. So, stay on the left of I-93 N when you head over the Zakim Bridge so you can grab the Tobin Bridge exit on your far left. The first exit off the Tobin Bridge will drop you into Chelsea waterfront area. From there you'll go on surface roads over to the airport.

Advantages to this:

• There aren't as many turns and red lights that are in the North Station area
• You won't get mixed up with all the Storrow Drive traffic going to the Sox games
• There are 3 lanes of northbound traffic

This should ease some of the congestion in the North Station/Government center area.

Recipe for disaster

From the looks of things the ceiling collapse stems from multiple failures in a process:

• Designers failed in their design of the ceiling and whether or not the epoxy bolt system would work
  
• Project Managers failed to verify and test the design, overconfidence and hubris exudes from this action
  
• Installers failed to install the ceiling system correctly as the designer specified, some bolts missing epoxy and some of the epoxy cracked on other bolts
• Installers concerns were not verified and/or taken notice
• Project Managers failed to verify and test the proper installation of the epoxy bolt system
• Follow up inspections weren't timely and failed to catch the failed bolts

This begins to look more and more like a project management failure at both the government and hired project management levels. I think we can attribute this to the cozy relationship between the Mass Pike Authority and Bechtel. The ultimate authority at the end was the Mass Pike Authority who should have had more oversight than what was displayed. All of the project's failures can be stemmed from the Mass Pike Authority and it's Big Dig management structure. These problems, detailed in a Globe article in 2001, were said to continue even after they were reported and unsurprisingly, continued when Matt Amorello took over.

Question of the day:

• Why does the Mass Pike Authority still exist today? It's purpose seems redundant to the Mass Highway department. And when it comes to government accountability, quasi-governmental bodies are terrible at that.
  

"The system is not working."

According to a 4PM press conference today, all 1,146 bolts in the I-90 Eastbound connector have been labeled unreliable. Add to that another 308 "items of concern" that are support system related.

Romney said that a secondary support system will need to be designed and built to support the 6000 lb slabs hanging above the roadway. The existing system is simply not working.

Estimated Time Frame: At least a couple of months... Probably a lot more than that.

On a good note though, is that the Ted Williams Tunnel doesn't appear to have any problems even though it uses the same system of epoxy and bolts. The ceiling tiles there are only 700 lbs and apparently the system is more rigid and robust than the other one.

The inspection of the entire Big Dig project's ceilings should be completed soon and I'm sure the number of problem bolts will go up.

So, what does this tell us? Well... The shoddy installation procedure was systemic and probably not isolated to one contractor (Modern Continental) and that inspections probably never took place above the ceiling panel. It's not too unreasonable to think that Mass Pike Authority never looked up there, we all assumed they looked because we assumed that they knew what they were doing and they were the experts.

As the driving public and the public, in general, we assume that the experts know what they're doing in the systems that surround our modern life. Accidents and incidents like this that undermine the public trust are often caused by design failures. We the public, don't necessarily know much about the engineering and design of the systems around us and we assume they work properly until the day they don't. These design failures are often just an "obvious" thing that was overlooked or a condition that was never thought about.

• A rudder that was too small for the Titanic and the main turbine couldn't properly reverse
• An improperly designed joint and cold weather conditions caused the solid rocket boosters to fail in the Challenger accident
• Simple water gauges in reaction vessel for Three Mile Island would have shown the lack of coolant

And sometimes it's not even the designers, it's the builders themselves in the Big Dig Tunnel collapse. While the design was prone to being defective, the installation of the suspended ceiling system at this point and time seems to be the primary reason why the system failed.

This reminds me of a phrase that was used in the 80's by Ronald Reagan with respect to the Soviet Union: Trust, but Verify.

Proper verification and a healthy skepticism of a designed system would have probably prevented the tunnel accident.

Again, we ask 2 questions:

• Why was the construction not up to specifications?
• Why wasn't the poor construction caught?
  

(FYI: I am not an expert at design, engineering, or accident investigations. This is mostly my own opinion.)

Of bolts and such...

From what we can tell, investigators seem to be honing on the bolts as the cause of concrete ceiling collapse last week.

Attorney General Reilly made a statement about how 3 of the bolts didn't even have glue on them. How could this happen? It's totally ridiculous that something like that could be missed, what were the installers thinking? Let's go home early and forget about the putting glue to hold up a 3 ton slab of suspended concrete?

Mitt Romney then said at press conference that some bolts could be pulled out almost 3/8ths of an inch, almost half an inch.

The bolt questions:

• Why did we choose this particular epoxy/bolt setup?
• Why did the installers fail to use epoxy and who were the installers?
• Why weren't thorough inspections ever done that could have caught the failed set of bolts?
• If inspections were done, why weren't the problems that were detected fixed?

It's been noted that the contractors don't really know how to use this bolt + epoxy system, with multiple failures nearly 6-10 years ago.

I think in the end, it wasn't bolt system that failed but the installers who failed to install it properly.

What next?

Romney also talked about 3 potential systems that would be used to reinforce/replace the current system of securing the panels.

• A new type of anchor bolt, rather than have a slim straight bolt, the end of the bolt would flare out when placed all the way in.
• A steel on steel connection, I assume a connection from the steel connecting rods holding the panel up to the steel rebar in the ceiling itself
• A cable system

With any of these systems, we absolutely need better inspections. From what we've seen, the Big Dig isn't simply a "build-it and forget-it" type of project, there's simply a lot more maintenance required.

Videos

In order to help the driving public, I'm going to try to make a few instructional videos on how to get around with all these detours.

Nothing is better than seeing the route for yourself rather than written directions.

Only getting worse...

The latest news is that the Mass Pike Westbound (I-90 W) connection to I-93 North and South is going to be shutdown for couple of weeks at least. Effectively, the I-90 section between 93 and the Ted Williams Tunnel in both directions is closed.

What this means to you...

Before, it was tough getting to the airport. Now, it's going to be tougher getting home from the airport after you've cleared the Ted Williams tunnel. Right after the tunnel, you'll get onto surface roads and make your way to on ramps to the I-93 North, South and I-90, the Mass Pike, Westbound.

Getting home from the airport:

If you live North of Boston and you usually take the Sumner Tunnel and I-93N, you won't notice a change, just take the Sumner Tunnel as before. Do NOT take the Ted Williams Tunnel, you'll end up with all of the people who need to take surface road detours to get to I-93 S and I-90 W.

If you live South of Boston, you'll need take the Ted Williams tunnel and then Exit 25 and follow the detours to get back onto I-90 West. This is a rather long and involved detour through South Boston. You'll go onto a road called Haul Road or Bypass road and then you'll end up taking a RIGHT onto Frontage road to get back onto I-90 West.

If you live South of Boston, you'll need take Exit 25 and follow the detours to onto I-93 South. This is a rather long and involved detour through South Boston. You'll go onto a road called Haul Road or Bypass road and then you'll end up taking a LEFT onto Frontage road to get onto I-93 South.


Getting to the airport:
Effectively, the Pike is cut off from direct access to the airport. You'll have to get onto surface roads to access the Callahan tunnel to get to the airport. Likewise, to get from airport to the Pike you'll need to get onto the surface roads right after the Ted Williams tunnel.

If you need to get to the airport from the North, coming in on I-93 S, you won't notice anything different, cross over the Zakim bridge and into the Airport exit ( Exit 24B ). The only thing you'll notice is a bunch more traffic.

If you need to get to the airport from the South, coming in on I-93 N, the Southeast Expressway, you'll need to get off at exit 23 (Government Center) or exit 26 (North Station). The detours will lead you to the Callahan tunnel.

If you need to get to the airport from the West, coming in on the Mass Pike (I-90) East, you have 2 options:
* Take Exit 18, Storrow Drive and then onto I-93 S and then take Exit 24B.
* Take Exit 24B and onto I-93 N and then take either exit 23 or 26 and follow the detours.
Basically, from the Mass Pike, you end up having to take either of the I-93 N/S options listed above:
Mass Pike East --> Storrow Drive --> I-93 S --> Callahan Tunnel --> Airport
Mass Pike East --> I-93 N --> Surface Roads --> Callahan Tunnel --> Airport

I personally recommend that if you can avoid the surface roads to get to the Callahan Tunnel, do so. I-93 S, Exit 24B backs up a bit, but I think that it's better than the surface road gridlock.

Stay posted...