Thoughts of a Tunnel Rat

Those who have not been living under mossy turves presumably have more information than they need about the ceiling collapse in the South Station Access Tunnel. I may be more familiar with the environs than most: I'm one of the few non-commercial drivers who has used the tunnel, east and westbound, every day for more than a year.

The Boston highway net created by the Big Dig is the only thing that makes it possible for me to live in Marblehead and work in Framingham. My trip out the past three mornings has only averaged ten minutes longer, since I'm up before most commuters. My trip home the past three evenings has risen from an average 55 minutes to an hour and three quarters. Gas mileage has dropped about 15 percent, since I spend more time stopping than going now. Today, I tried Route 128, because the masses have discovered Memorial Drive and there, I must now drive at walking speed. In my first ten miles on 128, there were three accidents, and an average road speed under 20 mph. That's dismal even by 128 standards.

I am swiftly running out of patience with dueling politicians and waffling engineers. One objective seems to be to scare all drivers shitless, perhaps to reduce public demand that somebody actually fix the goddam tunnel instead of pointing fingers and posturing. Another is, of course, to avoid being cornered into a deadline. That motive has led Turnpike Authority talking heads to begin using a very unfortunate expression, "closed indefinitely."

This is Massachusetts, where ordinary standards of time do not apply to highway projects. Over in Salem, there is a fairly new bridge to Beverly that took about 35 years to build, from concept to ribbon-cutting. No one called that timeline "indefinite." The bridge is supposed to link up with a bypass which has, in 40 years, moved from a gleam in an engineer's eye to a swath of land takings. There is a very remote chance that the bypass will be complete before the internal combustion engine is obsolete, but no one says that timeline is "indefinite," either.

"Closed indefinitely," in Mass. Highway-speak, means "six months after Hell freezes over."

Politicians and bureaucrats are wringing their hands over the public safety when they are not busy wringing each other's necks. They've scared off what few wits are owned by people who might use this tunnel twice a year, when Aunt Gertrude lands at Logan. They ignore the elevated risk of driving the highways that have to carry the load during their orations.

Risk? On the one hand, I can be frightened by the off chance of being squished by a three-ton concrete panel some genius decided to keep in place with glue and thumbtacks. I set that against the daily risks of driving on any Massachusetts divided highway (now much increased), and the near-total certainty that I will need to find my 50-something ass another job if this raree show does drag on for years, as seems likely, or even a couple of months.

This is not a moment to motivate me with speeches about the public interest. I want my frickin road back.