Amid probation department scandals, fish fraud, Sal DiMasi sell-outs, beer-drinking, chicken-scarfing zillionaire athletes, and global-warming deniers, you might think you’ve entered a parallel universe where no one behaves sensibly, honestly or responsibly.
But then you meet the folks at MassDOT. Yes, those guys (and gals.) After years of neglect—thanks, Mitt—they’ve got in place a bridge repair program that will help Massachusetts businesses get their goods to market, repair people get to our doors, commuters get to work and the rest of us able to drive pleasurably.
They accomplished their most impressive feat so far this summer on I-93 north of Boston. Over 10 weekends they replaced 14 bridges, starting the demolition on Friday night and working solidly for 52 hours putting the bridge back together with pre-fab components manufactured in New Jersey. They called the project the Fast 14. It is part of the Accelerated Bridge Program, an 8-year, $3 billion program to repair or replace 543 structurally deficient bridges all over Massachusetts.
We have a habit of driving north on I-93 on Friday evening or Saturday morning and returning to Boston on Sunday evening or Monday morning, so we followed the progress, thinking it might be fun to pull over and watch the work for the whole day. Vast steel girders lay near the bridges on Friday. They had been trucked up on the Interstates, escorted by the state police in New York and Massachusetts. Dozens of strong, skilled workmen crawled around cranes, truck cabs, and pieces of equipment unidentifiable to the non-engineering eye. The idea was to fit together modular units matching the unique geometry of each bridge with such efficiency that paving could be done in time to accommodate the Monday morning commuter traffic. Sometimes the guys even had time to stripe the traffic lanes.
Drivers had to deal with some inconvenience, since half the traffic lanes were closed during the weekend. But there were message boards north of the construction indicating how long a backup was. That meant that a couple of times returning to Boston we took the Mass Pike. If they hadn’t replaced the bridges in this way the inconvenience would have lasted four years.
Cool. Whose idea was this anyway?
Not mine, said Shoukry Elnahal, deputy chief engineer for bridges and tunnels. Nor was it the idea of Eliza Partington, the program’s technical coordinator, or Victoria Sheehan, the program’s manager.
When I talked with these people, they told me other states have used this method of bridge replacement and repair. “In the good old days, we’d close the bridge and create a detour,” said Elnahal, who said the detour might last for months or even years. “Now we just reroute traffic for a short time.”
No state, however, has done such work so aggressively, said Elnahal. It took a year of planning, design and manufacturing for these 10 weekends to work as they should. More than eighty percent of the $98.1 million cost was paid for with federal funds, and Massachusetts made up the rest. That’s about the same as the price tag for replacing the bridges in the conventional manner.
Another fast bridge project took place in Wellesley in July. The Cedar Street Bridge over Route 9 was demolished, and the entire bridge, which had been built off site, was then lowered into place in one weekend. Several others have been replaced in this way or are due for such treatment.
Smart people implementing innovative ideas. Isn’t that what Massachusetts has prided itself on ever since the first European settlers found the steep rivers un-navigable, so they turned them into mill power? And how about Mr. Tudor, who in the 19th century chopped up pond ice and shipped it to India and South America? I heard he introduced ice cream to those locales so potential customers would have a reason to buy his ice, but that story might be apocryphal.
A by-product of the speedy construction is that with designers, engineers, manufacturers and workmen, about 30,000 people had work. Maybe that’s why Massachusetts’ unemployment figures are lower than elsewhere.
The good news is that we’ve got competent people in charge who have good ideas and care about the public’s convenience.
The bad news is that their job is almost impossible. Maintenance was so bad in recent years that our infrastructure is pathetic. So far, even with fast, innovative strategies, only 16 percent or 87 out of 543 deficient bridges have been replaced or repaired. Only an additional 200 bridges will be replaced or repaired by 2016, when the Accelerated Bridge Program’s funding runs out. At that point another slew of bridges probably will have deteriorated to the point that they need a big fix.
Massachusetts isn’t unique in its decrepitude. “New highway money is spent on new projects rather than preserving and maintaining what we have,” Elnahal said. “We need to start thinking about maintenance and preservation.”
That reminded me of the new “flyover” the state built at the Sagamore Bridge. Judging from how bad Cape traffic still is, one wonders if the money had been better spent repairing a few bridges rather than building something new.
Right now, however, I’m grateful there are people in charge who are concerned about my driving safety, pleasure and convenience.
“It’s all about reducing the impact on the community,” said Elnahal’s colleague, Victoria Sheehan. “People can feel confident that we will put [their tax dollars] to good use.”
Now if only the airlines had as much concern for our convenience and pleasure as does MassDOT.