For any Bostonians wringing their hands over the cost of the city potentially hosting the 2024 Olympics, mayor Marty Walsh wants them to know the bid is NBD.
No Big Dig.
The Big Dig road project still is very controversial all these years later, with its poor management eventually leading to deadly consequences. As Boston makes a bid to host the summer games, some residents are concerned about a sequel to that costly fiasco.
“The Big Dig was a very different tool,” Walsh said Friday on WEEI’s “Middays with MFB” after Boston was chosen as the U.S. candidate for the 2024 games. “You can look at the Big Dig two ways. No. 1, there clearly was cost overrun and mismanagement in the administration of the Big Dig, but if you look at the benefit of the Big Dig, what it did for the city of Boston, opening up the Greenway, there was positives there as well.
“Now, the overruns obviously overshadow all that. I don’t know why that happened. That shouldn’t have happened. That was mismanagement on a whole bunch of different levels. That was 100 percent funded by taxpayers. We’re not looking to do a Big Dig situation where we have it 100 percent funded by taxpayers when it comes to the Olympics.”
Officially known as the Central Artery Project, the Big Dig was the most expensive highway project in American history. It lessened traffic congestion and allowed the city to replace the above-ground interstate with public green space, but it ended up costing almost three times original estimates.
Thumbnail photo via Twitter/@OnlyInBOS
