INT: In the future what do you think people will say as they look back at the Big Dig?

FS: Today the Big Dig is very visible. You see all the cranes. You see all the construction activity. People talk about it a lot. It's controversial because of cost. On the other hand, there are people who admire it begin of the engineering skill that's going into it and the construction skill. When you look downstream, I think that there's going to be a memory of to project from the literally thousands of people who participated in it. I think there's tremendous pride among the people who've designed and are building this project and they're going to be taking those skills on to other jobs, I am sure, all over the United States because other cities are going to be confronting this. So I think there's going to be a memory in kind of the hearts and minds of to people who directly participated.

I think 15 years from now, in terms of the city, my expectation is the project is going to be largely forgotten. Most of it's underground and, ironically, the bridge over the Charles, the cable staid bridge is the most visible part and I think people will see the bridge and say, "Oh, that's a unique bridge," and wonder how it came to be and they'll probably still talk about it. But nobody ever talks about, in my experience, remarkable engineering achievements like the New York subway system. I mean do people go into the subway every day and say, "Wow, what a great subway system! Imagine the work back before they had all these mechanical means when people would sheer muscle power were digging by hand and blasting the rock. It's an incredible engineering achievement. It's underground." You know, people get up in the morning, they get their cup of coffee, and they go ride the subway and you hope it works.

So I think substantially the Big Dig is going to be a lot like the New York subway system. It's a tremendous construction and engineering achievement. I'm really proud to have been a part of it. I think there are thousands of other people who are going to feel that kind of pride and remember it and bring what they've learned to other jobs but I think for the general public as long as it functions well, it's going to recede into the background. I don't think it's going to be visible in the same way that Boulder Dam or the Brooklyn Bridge or things that you can see and generation after generations says, "Wow, how did they do this?" This is going to be like the New York subway system, I think.

INT: How long is the Big Dig expected to function well before something else is needed?

FS: I think the Big Dig is going to last for a very long time. That, in part, is a question of the kind of policies people adopt over the years. The parking limitation in downtown Boston is designed to make sure that people primarily use public transportation to get to the city. The basic objective here, again, is to take a system that now operates at six or seven miles an hour and have it function at 35 miles an hour, reasonable flow, for about the same number of vehicles, slight increase. If people forget that that was a purpose and substantially increase the parking supply and you get twice as many vehicles trying to use it, then they're going to be traveling six miles an hour again. I hope that that's not gonna happen. I think too much money has been invested. There's too much to gain from having smooth flow.

So I'm hoping that what we'll see is a husbanding of this resource, recognition that these aren't things that you can do frequently. They're too expensive and too complicated and this has got to last a very long time. I think what that means is major continued attention to improving the public transportation system so that it's the primary way of getting into the city and that the roadways are really for those trips that have to be made on rubber tired vehicles. I think if you keep it in that balance, I think practically speaking, this is the last big highway construction that you're going to see in the center of Boston for at least a half a century. Other than replacing some other facilities that are reaching age limits, I think basically this is it and we need to make it last by really prioritizing the use of public transportation. So I sort of end where I begin. This project is really -- it looks like a highway. It's the biggest highway construction in United States, but it comes out of what was called the anti-highway movement that comes out of a view that what's really needed to make the city function is upgrading our public transportation system and within that context, I think it's going to work fine.

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