Mike | The Mind of Men

Tunnels, Conferences, and other annoyances

Posted by : Mike Posted on : 14-07-2006

This week a small part of the world was in Boston for the annual Microsoft Partner Conference. This conference brings together those organizations that are involved in delivering Microsoft solutions. A fair number (some 30%-40%) of the more than 7,000 attendees were from outside the United States. For many visitors this was their first trip to our fair city. What greeted them?

Well, when they picked up their conference credentials and giveaways, inside the bag they found a small map of the Boston subway system along with a note advising them that they may prefer to use public transit over the buses that were provided by Microsoft to ferry them from their hotels to the convention center. They were warned that if they chose to use the buses, they should plan to leave at least an hour before the start of the keynotes if they hoped to make it in on time.

I have been going to Microsoft conferences in other cities for a number of years; Dallas, San Diego, New Orleans, Orlando, etc. Never have I seen something like this. All of the other cities seem to be able to move people from the hotels to the convention center without insane delays – what is wrong with Boston? Perhaps it is because our aging infrastructure provides only a small number of viable routes to the convention center; routes that were already clogged with traffic before they decided to put up a huge convention hall. Fortunately, the Big Dig tunnel provided some small relief…

Then the tunnel collapsed – our $14 billion (and still counting) grand public works project, The Big Dig, had struck yet again. This time, it cost one poor woman (and mother) her life. As most people already know, a piece of the drop ceiling came loose from it’s mooring and dropped tons of concrete onto the car. If there is a bright side to this sad tale; it is that at least it happened at 11:00 P.M. as opposed to the middle of rush hour when many more would have been killed or injured.

Now, as engineers take the tunnel ceiling apart and carefully examine it, construction shortcuts taken by greedy contractors and others are coming to light. Ceiling bolts that were supposed to be secured by epoxy are just screwed into the concrete, other areas that required reinforcement were skimped on as well. We now have a $14 billion (and still counting) timebomb in this city which, when it fails, will cause untold amounts of economic harm to the communtity as it will paralyze traffic for years while reconstruction is attempted.

A big thanks to all of our public servants who so diligently kept a close eye on this project. Thanks too to all of the contractors whose work was so meticulous. Thanks to all of the visitors to our fair city who are asked to pay special hotel and rental car taxes to help pay for this disaster. And a big thanks to our fellow Americans who, though many will never set foot in Boston, have helped to fund this project through their Income Taxes.

If nothing else, maybe this will be a wakeup call to all of us that we need to keep a closer eye on our wallets. This kind of project can be successful, but it requires the oversight of people who care more about safety and cost savings than about lining their own pockets. Until we demand better of our public servants we will continue to get this kind of incompetence.