| On opening day of the Ted Williams Tunnel in Boston, we stood
at the portal of the new tunnel. The temperature was well below
freezing. It was cold and raw next to the harbor. A light snow drifted
down, early flakes of what would be a record winter barrage. There
were some hardy seagulls circling overhead, cawing and swooping
for food scraps. Less hardy birds had long since flown south, perhaps
to warmer tunnel opening ceremonies in Virginia or Florida.
A podium had been set up in front of the tunnel entrance. The portal
was festooned with banners and ribbons. Most of the dignitaries
were already on the podium, except for guest of honor, Ted Williams,
and a few others. The idea was that a car would drive through the
new tunnel from East Boston with the governor, the guest of honor
and the remaining guests. This was actually a little bit backwards
from the way you usually do it. In other opening ceremonies, someone
cuts the ribbon, and then everyone drives through/across/under whatever
is being opened. In this case, they were driving through the tunnel
before the speeches were made and the ribbons cut. Yet, it was much
easier to get to the site from the airport via the new tunnel instead
using the old tunnels and fighting the traffic of downtown Boston.
This was why we built the new tunnel in the first place.
There is a great tradition for Opening Day stretching back centuries,
which we were about to be a part of. Maybe they had some dignitaries
cutting the papyrus at the opening of the pyramids. At the opening
of the Brooklyn Bridge, wrote David McCullough, “There were
days of festivities and fireworks over the harbor. Thousands of
people crossed the great bridge in wonder and appreciation.”
In those days, the public deemed civil engineers to be a bit more
heroic than today. Our marvelous structures and creations are more
expected and mundane now, part of the background scenery like a
mountain or a forest.
Standing in the cold, snowy portal, I remembered another opening
day, more than thirty years ago. My father had gotten tickets to
the opening of the Verazzano Bridge in New York City. We listened
to what seemed like hours of speeches. Of that ceremony, Henry Petrosky
wrote that the great bridge engineer, Othmar Amman, was barely recognized.
I
suppose there was a long speech by Chairman Robert Moses (I was
too young to remember it). The Verazzano was the last hurrah of
his Triboro Bridge and Tunnel Authority. A planned cable-stayed
span over Long Island Sound that was to have been built after the
Verazzano was voted down in one of the earliest anti-highway rebellions.
After the speeches were done, the ribbon was finally cut and we
climbed into our cars for the first drive across the new structure.
This was a great moment, driving on the glistening span in the bright
sunlight, suspended in air over New York Harbor.
For engineers, opening day is the culminating event of a long, sometimes
tedious process. Where there was nothing, we invested our imagination
and skill to create a new structure. The Ted Williams Tunnel started
off as a gleam in someone’s eye. The dream of a new tunnel
was debated, pontificated on, insulted and praised, often all at
the same time. Through hard work and political compromise, the project
became a reality. Soon, what was dirt was transformed into a busy
construction site. The “super scoop,” a shovel with
a huge maw, was floated out on a barge and used to rake the bottom
of the harbor. Great steel tubes were fabricated in Baltimore and
floated up the Atlantic coast to be immersed in the trench. The
tunnel tiles were installed, the finishes were finished.
Whether it be a bridge, or a tunnel, or a new water treatment facility,
on opening day we sit back and reflect on the majesty and greatness
of what we engineers have done. So it was for me in the cold of
December 1995, when the new tunnel was officially born and welcomed
into the world.
The next day, it was back to work—procedures, process, calculations,
debates. Another opening day loomed in the future. R&D |
