FS: Basically you have two major projects, depression of the artery, which is Interstate 93, and the completion of I-90 across and under Boston Harbor over to Logan Airport. Those are independent interstate highways and we're entitled to 90 percent of the money under the law at the time for both. In the case of I-93, the original elevated Central Artery was built before the interstate program, so it was built a hundred percent with local funds. So the reconstruction of that facility under the rules of the interstate highway program, we're entitled to 90 percent of the funding for that. In the case of I-90, extending it over to Logan Airport, that was simply the completion of Interstate 90 to an interstate facility, that is, Logan Airport. So I went to the governor and said "People are acting like these are alternatives. The fact is we're entitled to the funding for both. Instead of fighting about which one to do, we ought to do both and, number one, the transportation system will benefit as well as the environment of the city, but, in addition to that, we'll get these two constituencies that are fighting against each other unified and fighting for the combined program."

Governor Dukakis accepted that idea and we decided to go in that direction and then he invited John Volpe to come in and meet with him. Volpe had been once highway commissioner of the state and then governor of the state and then US Secretary of Transportation, ultimately, ambassador to Italy. He was retired, but he was the major Republican. On a project as large as this, you know that it's going to be conceptualized in one administration, designed in another, built in another, and if you don't have a really broad bipartisan consensus that this is something the region needs, it's never gonna happen. If this is a political football back and forth unless you intend to get re-elected five times in a row, it's simply not gonna happen. You have to have -- it has to be seen as a civic enterprise.

So Governor Dukakis asked Former Governor Volpe to join him and make this a bipartisan effort and Governor Volpe said he'd be glad to do that, that he had been blessed in his life with a lot of roles that he was proud, but the one thing he always felt badly about was when he became highway commissioner back in the '50s, all the buildings had been knocked down for the Central Artery, the plans were ready to go, and he looked at it and said, "This is a giant mistake. This should not happen," but he felt he had no alternative because all the destruction had been done. So he signed the contracts to construct that elevated portion of the artery and he said, "I've always felt badly about it and I'd really welcome the opportunity to rectify what I consider one of the few mistakes in my whole career."

Volpe was great. I mean he contacted Republican senators for us and really made it a bipartisan civic effort that was very important to the ability to get the project done. Now, obviously, our core Democratic support Congressman O'Neil, Congressman Moakley, Senator Kennedy, Senator Tsongas at that time, and then later Senator Kerry -- it was a remarkable team effort with very strong support and without that, it never would have happened. But Volpe made it bipartisan -- and Silvio Conte, who was the congressman from western Mass, helped make it a bipartisan effort. So that was part of the dynamic of putting these two together was to combine the constituencies and change the dynamic in a way that was, I think very beneficial for the project and ultimately for the state.

FS: You know, one way to understand what the project will do in transportation terms is to understand that today most travelers from the west and south who are going over to Logan Airport have to get onto the Central Artery, go as far as the Sumner Tunnel, and then go over to the airport, which means that they're loading onto this very overloaded Central Artery in addition to everybody who's going to the city. So the tunnel to the airport component of the project basically takes those trips off of the Central Artery altogether. So it helps relieve the central road by taking a large number of trips totally off of that road and going directly under the tunnel over to Logan Airport. The second element of the project, the depression of I-93, takes this ugly elevated road which is too narrow and puts it underground so that it's less disruptive to the city, but also widens it so that it's not constrained as it is today. So in combination, the two pieces double the east-west capacity to cross Boston Harbor. That's what the tunnel does for you. And depressing the artery effectively doubles the north-south capacity through the city. So the transportation philosophy here is to not encourage more people to come into the city with their cars, because we do have the parking limit at Logan and in downtown. But for those people who do come, to have much better travel circumstances.

So what we're trying to do is take a system that now operates at about six miles an hour during the peak and have it operate not at 55 miles an hour, but have it operate like at 35 miles an hour, kind of a reasonable level of flow. So it's a confusing of the project because some people think, "Well, you're doubling capacity. Does that mean twice as many cars?" Hopefully not, because if you have twice as many cars, you're just gonna have a big traffic jam, twice as big except it's underground. The idea here is not to double the number of cars, but to double the capacity so that the cars that you do have actually can move through at a reasonable rate of flow. And we've got very important facilities here. We're talking about the Mass General Hospital. Someone's getting rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, you don't want seven miles an hour; you want 35 miles an hour. So that's really what the transportation philosophy of the project is -- to get reasonable levels of flow on the two facilities by, in the first instance, decongesting the one and, secondly, widening it a bit.

INT: Why's it not so easy to execute the Big Dig right after the decision was made to do it?

FS: Any large project is going to be complicated, but this one became unfairly complicated, I think, because the Reagan Administration for political reasons, decided to block the project. It was totally unfair. We were, you know, we're part of the United States of America. We've paid our taxes into the interstate highway system. Our money has helped build roads in Texas and California. We had not received the interstate highway funds in Massachusetts because we had built the Central Artery early, before the program existed, but we had been paying our taxes. So what we were proposing is, "Let's complete the interstate in this section using 90/10 funds" --90 percent federal funds, like everyone else in the country has. There was some political rivalry because of the strength and brilliance of our political leaders. I mean Congressman O'Neil, who became Speaker of the House, Senator Kennedy, were very visible Democratic figures.

So the Reagan Administration basically blocked the project and dragged their feet. They didn't give us approval on our environmental documents. They said, "Well, it's not clear that you're entitled to the money," which was not the case at all. I mean we had legal opinions that showed that we were entitled to the money. But that political intervention basically slowed the project down for over four years. And during that time we had to build a political coalition to change that circumstance. Ultimately it ended up requiring, including language in the federal law, called the Surface Transportation Act of 1987 which, quote, "clarified" that we were indeed entitled to the 90 percent federal funding to do the combination of I-90 and I-93, as we were proposing it.

So that any project of this size again would have delay in it because it's very big and it's very complicated, but this was really unduly delayed by the political blockage created by the Reagan Administration. It's why having Governor Volpe with us advocating with the Republicans that this was unfair and that we had a right to see the project move, particularly since Volpe had been the Washington Bureau of Public Roads chief under Eisenhower and then later Secretary of Transportation, he had a lot of substantive credibility as well as the political credibility of being a Republican. So it made it clear this wasn't a partisan thing from a Massachusetts point of view. It was just a good transportation policy. But there's no question it slowed us down. I mean having the President of the United States trying to stop you, we're darned lucky we survived, but it certainly delayed us by at least four years.

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