Why Boston Spent 16 Years And $22 Billion Digging A Hole
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- Опубліковано 15 тра 2024
- America's most expensive highway project ended up being a complete disaster. Here's why.
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Host: / nickfreitasva
4:00 “Nothing is easier than spending the public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody.” - Calvin Coolidge
My favorite President. 7th grade teacher lectured for weeks about him and Ramblin' Jack Elliot 😂
22 pages of notes worth. Same for my brother two years previous to me.
I've been on projects run by private conglomerates - same thing. Literally billions wasted and stolen.
It doesn't matter who pays the cheques, what matters is who runs it. Look at the history of successful government projects: as examples, Napoleon's rebuild of Paris, or Peter the Great's construction of St. Petersburg.
@user-cm4lg5st1o or Bud Cianci's rebuilding of Providence, RI.
Did he take kickbacks? ABSOLUTELY. Was Providence completely rebuilt downtown making it an inviting tourist destination and did he get it done UNDER budget and UNDER time? You betcha!!
So, corruption CAN be a benefit to the people if wielded correctly.
It's a textbook government operation.
The way a government contract SHOULD work is...
1) solicit bids for companies to submit
2) the best bid (not cheapest) is selected
3) the selected company builds it
4) once finished, they get paid
5) if they can't finish, there is no payment
6) if they finish over budget, the company pays the difference
Cheapest and most expensive offer/bid should be automatically discarted before further examination of the offers/bids.
1 and 2 happen already, but you cannot have a contractor foot the bill throughout construction, that’s why they only get paid for work in place. Also, if there are overruns and the contractor gets paid for them, then those overruns were not their fault. That’s how current contracting works. The government does try to shed as much risk as possible to the contractors, but there are always the possibility of unforeseen conditions and that is a risk that the government doesn’t want the contractor to bear during bid time, or else they will be paying for that assumption of risk.
Typical government contracts carry fines for being late as well, and those damages can at times exceed the actual construction cost, but those get borne by the contractor. The system works pretty well assuming no corruption is taking place. Construction is risky business, but necessary.
@@kolomaznik333not always, sometimes there is a good reason for both situations. And sometimes you only have two bids .
Keep in mind that in the real world, things don't go according to plan, and yet the bids are kept low on the expectation that things will indeed go according to plan.
@@SG-js2qn 2 billion to 22 billlion is not things going south, it's just blatant corruption.
Same problem with the California bullet train.
The onion money pit joke has never been more relevant
Classic video. 🤣
They were "Building Back Better"
The Boston area is extremely corrupt.
And almost always had been.
To be fair, there are better examples of failed projects than the Hubble Space Telescope. Sure, the mirror was incorrectly made and produced some very blurry images. However, after the Shuttle went up to make some repairs, the HST has taken some of the most amazing deep-space photos in history.
I know THE guy in charge of grinding the lens for Hubble. It was a very strange calibration problem that was off in the beginning and the defect just got worse by completion. If the assembly techs would have checked the satellite before sending it up, they could have reground the lens. So they gave it a pair of glasses while up in space. Government contracts.
I saw a video from Milton Friedman about the 4 types of spending and the worst was spending someone else's money or something you have no interest in, which coincidentally is every government project in the history of the world.
Yet we are still doing it.....
As an inmate of Massachusetts, I grew up during this disaster. Now, the traffic on I-90 and I-93 is much worse, and a woman lost her life in one of the tunnel. Today, more people take a shuttle bus into Logan that goes around those highways, and people drive I-95 instead of I-93.
The only good roadwork I have seen in Mass. over the past 4 decades (I'm in my 40s) has been the redesign of the intersections at the Bourne and Sagamore bridges going to Cape Cod. On the mainland side. Getting rid of those godawful rotaries was really good.
I live in Ct. about 25 min from the Mass. border and I have a lot of family in western Mass as well as my father living year round on Cape Cod. So I often have reason to visit the state. (I also have family in NH so I traverse the state to get to them as well.)
addendum: That isn't just me saying it. My father will say the same thing. (I've traffic on US 6 backed up all the way to Hyannis on more than one occasion. According to my father, while summer traffic is still bad, it is Cape Cod afterall, those 20 mile backups don't occur anymore. Not with the normal flow of traffic anyways.)
edit: I am only talking about major roadwork.
Inmate. Lol.
@@mountainghoti1671 Perhaps at Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. That is up in the great state of Massivetwoshits. :P
(Its where Titicut Follies was filmed back in the 60s. Hard to watch due to how bad people were treated tbh, but worth it)
I lived in Boston from 2000 to 2003. I had to fly weekly for my job. The drive to Boston Logan was always an experience as they kept changing the concrete barricades used to redirect traffic onto alternate routes and was a nightmare for someone who was not used to the area at the time. I probably got lost 50% of the time returning from a trip as my route would be effected. No GPS back then just a Thomas Guide. As long as I could find Massachusetts Ave I could find my way home.
wait, what do you mean by fly weekly.
"Affected" not "effected. "Affect" is a verb. "Effect" is a noun.
Great summary Nick. Keep up the good work.
I remember reading about this and even watching news shows on the over cost and leak problems. Thanks for sharing this.
When Silent Cal spoke, it was a very good idea to listen.
Complicated things are easy to hide behind. Thank you for the breakdown. The lights go on, and the roaches scury.
And the prefabricated tunnel sections literally came up short.... can't make this S- up.
During the consideration phase, the project cost would be lowballed because if the real expected cost were put forward for consideration even politicians might balk at committing so much resources to it.
A dollar paid in taxes is a dollar down the drain.
You area blessing to mankind! 🤠Pete
I’d love to see one of these about the VA hospital in Denver.
Just found your site. Have you taken a look at the California High Speed Rail? We really know how to spend the people's money and get nothing for it out here.
Here in Connecticut this project has long been just another joke about how bad Massivetwoshits is.
"Work-orders" were an astronomical part of the over spending.
Money laundering.
An example of one of the great moments in unintended consequences
I don't believe for even one minute that these consequences are ever unintended.
Hell yeah, I still remembering seeing a rough 3d previsualization at the Boston Museum of science in 1989 on how Boston would look in the year 2000! delayed....................................................
More, more, more! We are loving what you do and how you do it. Any plans for national office?
Just like high speed rail in California 🤷♂️
The first day it opened a panel fell off the ceiling and killed people... and the Sumner tunnel (which is a connecting tunnel) is still under construction at least once a year.
Can you please do an episode about the Impoundment Control ACT of 1974 and what the Constitution actually states about the power of the executive branch? It is nearly impossible to find unbiased information.
yeah... that was good ol' thomas "tip" o'neil (the house speaker)... i remember that... and don't forget about good ol' robert "birch" bayh (longest (self) serving democrat senator and claude pepper from florida... these guys were all lbj's cronies, who had figured out that "the great society" was a great way for them and theirs to get rich...
Its not only a tunnel under Boston harbor. There is another under the busiest parts of the city. Expensive yes, but great when done.
we could use cal right about now.
Every infrastructure project in Massachusetts costs more and takes longer to do than in most neighboring states. "Don't kill the job" is a long-used, unofficial "motto" that's taken seriously by the unions and the various municipalities. They always seem to have to dig up recently resurfaced streets in order to replace ancient water pipes that could have been done during the road construction.
The state has some of the worst roads in the nation, despite the exorbitant expenditures and cost overruns. By the time a one-mile stretch of road is finished after five years under construction, the end where it began will need to be redone.
It's a corrupt system, and certain people always benefit from the spoils, at the expense of the taxpayers.
Hey, we're talking about Massachusetts. A lot of that money ended up on Beacon Hill in Democrat politicians pockets. Massachusetts takes second place to no one when it comes to corruption. Of course, the unions are always willing to help out. They're great with no-show jobs for politicians' relatives. I worked Summers for public works when in college and do I have stories I could tell.
Illinois and Shitcago says hold my beer...
The big dig was nothing but a money dump, that damn expressway should have been entirely demolished, as to remove traffic from the city center imho.
And nothing will change. The money is endless.
Answer : Whitey Bulger
Unions, graft, corruption on and on.
Hey Nick, do California’s high speed train.
Kind of ironic, this is the same crossing made by Paul Revere and William Dowes in 1776 to Warn the over taxing British were coming. They did it with a row boat and a horse.
oh, you mean like the so-far 1 mile's worth of "high speed rail" over here in CA that has already cost over $11 billion?
Great work Nick! Scooby snacks for you.
Praying for Israel and the entire Middle East.
My allegiance is to Liberty, and the Repubic.
"i'm from the government, and we're here to help"... r r ...
Because the companies that are doing the construction are all owned by politicians whether they be state level or federal level. And it's a question of how much money you can pilfer from the taxpayer. For example, the orange reflective barrels were rented if my memory serves me well from a company and every time one of them got damaged or broken or lost, the taxpayer had to pay money to replace it at an inflated price. Items were ordered that were better than spec and then when inspected they were told they had to be removed and the company or the politician or third party kept that better part and the taxpayer would have to pay for the new correct part and on and on it goes
Follow the money and see where it ends up at . Also check if the contractors or subcontractors are giving money to certain politicians .
Beard Wednesday on a Thursday!
Reagan had it right. It was going to be too expensive.
Sadly not a shock
Why are we running six lane highways through city centers?
Because money.
Read "The Big Roads" about the interstate highway system. 🤔
Taxpayers: What are you doing?
Boston: Diggin a hole.
Taxpayers: Why?
Boston: To make a hole.
Taxpayers: A hole for what?
Boston: More diggin.
This is complete bs , yes it was expensive, but it was more than a tunnel to the airport
They should have called Trump.
Vote Libertarian.
How about we just work on getting voters educated on issues rather than just towing a party line?
@@mjgbabydragonlet
Because emotions almost always rule facts at the ballots.
Tax money is not “your money.” Money paid in taxes is the governments money. Taxes are not theft, either. You have representation in the legislative body that sets tax policy and you receive services, whether highways, national defense, etc. in return for those taxes.
You are correct, taxation is not theft. Its extortion. Will toss you in prison if you don't pay
Said representation just isn't anymore.
@@mountainghoti1671 you are right. Because of the structure of the US Senate small population states are overly represented, which has ramifications for the makeup of the Surpreme Court and the Electoral College. California has a population larger than 21 states combined, but has 2 Senators vs. 42 for the other 21. So, we are we effectively disenfranchising 40 million Americans dues to under-representation?