Road caves and tempers rise on I-93

[unhappycamper]

Road caves and tempers rise on I-93
By Eric Moskowitz
Globe Staff / August 5, 2010

MEDFORD — The surface of Interstate 93 ruptured here yesterday for the second day in a row, creating a gash large enough to swallow a car and snarling traffic for miles while the state performed emergency repairs that officials said will have the road open for this morning’s commute.

Engineers were forced to close three of four northbound lanes, causing tens of thousands of motorists to idle on the traffic-snarled interstate or scramble for alternate routes. Traffic was backed up from Medford to the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, meaning that it took an hour or more to travel a 5-mile stretch that ordinarily takes just a few minutes to drive.

“It created this nightmare commute,’’ Luisa Paiewonsky, highway administrator for the state Department of Transportation, told reporters yesterday morning while standing below the faulty I-93 bridge as light streamed through a wide-open hole. The highway, the main north-south artery through Greater Boston, normally carries 100,000 northbound vehicles every weekday.

The vast holes that opened 25 feet apart on consecutive days were not the typical spring potholes bemoaned by New England drivers, but were caused by something far more serious: the decay of concrete and steel attributed to years of postponed maintenance.

“It’s like when your neighbor’s house needs painting and your neighbor doesn’t paint it for 10 years, so instead of it needing painting now, the siding has rotted out,’’ said Frank Tramontozzi, chief engineer for the Department of Transportation.




unhappycamper comment: 10 years of no bucks. I wonder where the money went? Could our trillion dollar 'defense' budget have something to do with that?

[Kat45]

1. Think they might get a hint about the need for jobs programs for infrastructure repair?

Unfortunately, probably not.