That’s a bit optimistic. The environmental assessment to the karst and aquifer that exists under the city would take a significant fraction of that time.
Big infrastructure takes this long. Americans are totally against real solutions.
Ideally we’d build this with a real train system but both are 5-10 years of pain.
There’s no infrastructure project worth doing in 1 year or less at our scale and none of the ones that actually fix our issues are that fast either.
Either we commit to a transit overhaul for 5-10 years or we turn into Houston jr.
haha....hahahaahahah... HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHHA
Oh boy thats a good one....
oh wait, you are serious... you dont know the history of "the big dig"........
You are talking about literally the MOST EXPENSIVE highway project in the history of this nation... and one plagued with not years, but DECADES of fuckups and failures and cost overruns. Like people literally went to prison over corruption charges linked to this project which went on for 20 YEARS.
It is literally the case study of when Project Management goes horribly wrong.... and was so even years ago when I took project management and still is so while I am finishing my masters. You know how badly you have to fuck up for a project to be considered THE case study for not just before it was even completed, but a decade and a half after it was?
[Seattle put a highway under their downtown and was not a disaster like in Boston.](https://www.king5.com/article/news/seattle-tunnel-were-lessons-learned-from-bostons-big-dig/281-508ef2fe-9892-4b95-873b-c57339cb6482) This kind of project is not impossible and it just requires a little patience and imagination. We learn from our mistakes after all.
Except you literally glossed over why... Seattles "tunnel" was nowhere near the size of i35 or I93. Its a 4 lane highway where they stacked the lanes into two lanes above and below in the tunnel.
>Seattle had the benefit of not having an 8-lane super highway that it had to bury,
They also would have to run shallow like they did in Boston and unlike Seattle where the ground allowed for a much deeper tunnel to be buried.
But you know, keep armchair engineering something thats been studied in-depth here.
> They also would have to run shallow like they did in Boston and unlike Seattle where the ground allowed for a much deeper tunnel to be buried.
Other than the water table, what would be the depth concerns?
Geological stability. We have a crap ton of cave systems and aquifers around this area, which would make tunnels a lot more difficult than in Boston where the ground is pretty solid, yet even there they had challenges.
This was actually looked into a couple years back, the idea of tunneling around here for i35 specifically is not a unknown... its just prohibitively expensive. Couple with that some of these caves may very well harbor life never before seen or rarely seen which is not a unknown here. McNeil high school has a cave system under it where they discovered an endangered species of spider of all things which caused serious issues with campus expansion and requires one of their courtyards to be close off to students now.
Are you sure? My understanding is that porosity and cave concerns are basically limited to the area along and to the west of the Balcones Fault zone, which roughly tracks Mopac through most of Austin (which is why McNeil had issues during construction, along with some of the overpasses on Mopac). But the segment of I35 through town is actually east of the fault zone, in the much more solid limestone of the Coastal Plain. That limestone IIRC is actually almost ideal for tunneling; dense and solid enough to be self supporting, while still soft enough that TBMs can make good progress. And you don't have to go very deep to get into that good limestone. That's what they said when they bored the Waller Creek Tunnel, that for all the other issues with that project, the actual tunneling went incredibly smooth. There are also a couple of massive infrastructure tunnels currently being cut along Parmer without any apparent cave or void issues, and for all his other (extremely numerous) faults, Musk's Boring Company is here and appears to be poking holes all over the place east of I35.
Edwards Aquifer is very close to the surface (<150 ft) near the Colorado River, so i35 would have to be sunk and capped. It can't be a tunnel like in Seattle without impacting everyone's drinking supply.
This doesn't mean it is impossible. It absolutely can be done with minimal overrun and delays using proper engineering, design, and cost estimation. The Big Dig in Boston is considered a failure because it was poorly designed and constructed. Ultimately, corruption led to a lot of inefficient contracts, cut corners, and extremely high maintenance/litigation costs- not because it was ToO CoMpLeX.
I'm just making a point that it is very possible to do this type of project and keep it relatively on budget and on schedule. Regardless of the scale of the projects, one went 7% over budget and 20% longer than scheduled, while the other went roughly 500% over budget and 200% longer than planned (and had constant maintenance woes for years after completion).
Except your not. The projects ARENT the same. Seattles was nowhere near the complexity of Bostons and Austin’s while probably not going to be as complex as Bostons is infinitely more than what they did in Seattle.
I lived in Seattle when that thing was getting dug. Buildings in pioneer square were sinking because modern Seattle is built on fill dirt above old Seattle. Wasn’t as big of a disaster, but far from smooth
I also lived in Seattle and worked on the project tangentially as a staff geologist; settling from dewatering was expected, monitored, and mitigated for in an in incredibly smooth fashion IMO. There was a plan in place from the get-go and it worked exactly as it was supposed to.
Dallas capped Woodall Rogers 14 years ago.
Houston planning to tear down and cap the Pierce Elevated.
Austin’s inability to carry out infrastructure projects keeps it a second tier Texas city
Remember how long it took to sink that tiny portion of the Express lane on Mopac underground a couple years ago? I can't imagine these same people having to do MILES of that.
That tiny part was at the very edge of the Balcones Fault. That hard flint was the reason the land faulted there, back when Pangea broke up. I 35 is east of that mess. You can tell where the problem was because there are cliffs lining the river. On the east side the river is a smooth grade with flood-plane banks.
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMQKK3\_a14M3A-SQdVVWhOfOw8xRUuueJ](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMQKK3_a14M3A-SQdVVWhOfOw8xRUuueJ)
There already are a few out there. I am guessing it was not as big a news story around here as it was in the northeast. I95 which the big dig was moving is THE major East Coast artery. It goes from Maine all the way to Florida and right through multiple major cities like Boston, NYC, Philly, Baltimore, Jacksonville etc.
I remember as a kid the NYC stations constantly running stories on how much of a shitshow the project was.
We have a metro population of 2.2m. the big dig cost 24billion 15 years ago. In today dollars that is maybe $40b. So it would cost every man woman and child $20,000 each as their share of that one project. Is there any way you can formulate a sales pitch?
Run the project better. But even if we cut it in half it’s still going to be expensive.
I10s budget for maintenance in Houston is just 10 billion. This isn’t that bad
Edit: this is why trains have a much higher return on investment
I understand that, that is a bad system of how its done but my point is we have the money.
The reason its bad that this is just budget for i10 in one city. This would be budget for i35 in one city. Texas cities need to tax more to overhaul infrastructure but honestly if we could use those state funds they use on roads for txdot we could fix almost all these issues infrastructure wise without increasing taxes. But expanding highways has to be halted.
'we' is not who you think it is. The state has a surplus. The state government is Republican. They are not spending state money in blue cities. They are spending on what benefits rural areas, which includes access to big cities. That they carve up and deface the cities is a huge plus.
>Edit: this is why trains have a much higher return on investment
Ah yes those [famously profitable US train projects](https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-subway-biden-administration-grant-california-b8cbf564?st=uom1ixdcnxkrjwp&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink)
We can't even get a decent above-ground light-rail system going since they keep shortening it and taking away the actual useful stops from the plan *before they even start building.*
Because, money.
It would cost around $7-8,000/LF (assuming a 200' wide highway, 30' below grade) just to dig it out. Then you have to pay for the retention walls on either side, which is about another $8-9,000/LF assuming the same 30' drop on both sides. Then we get to the paving, which is roughly $45/SF or another $9000/LF. We're up to around \~$25,000+/LF of road. Then, if you want to cover it, you're gonna need to add another $15,000/LF to cover the "capping of it". All-in that's roughly $40,000/LF or \~$211,200,000 for every mile, and that's BEFORE contractor markups.
That’s about $100 per person in the metro area per mile. You’re actually making it sound feasible.
But I’d really rather that money was spent on a quality light rail system.
Jesus, come on, they already tried a tunnel downtown, the Waller Creek tunnel and walkway, which ballooned from an original 25 million estimate when it was passed in 1998 to over 150 million by the time they finished it, what, nearly 2020 (it took them over a dozen years of planning to even start to get started)? Just a general lack of attention on everybody's part, from a building blocking the capital view quarter, to improper use of rebar, and crappy concrete, such that the way that the whole system is supposed to work, to mitigate flooding during a sudden rain, it just doesn't.
I remember when they spent literal YEARS working on the very short underground tunnel from MOPAC to downtown.
Limestone is a bitch. Not gonna happen in our lifetime
I mean, that is effectively what they are proposing with the cap and stich. Big Dig was done partially to get under the river. We could do that if we had the money, though an excavation like that in limestone is going to be even harder than the big dig. Instead they will dig a trench and cover it, gaining back that cover space for a boulevard and parks. Or at least TxDOT is willing to let COA pay to reclaim that space.
Yeah, the flooding infrastructure around there isn’t great.
https://austin.eater.com/2014/7/18/6184707/easy-tigers-patio-slammed-by-waller-creek-flash-flood
To be fair, water ingress into tunnels is a pretty well understood engineering issue, which is why tunnels running under actual standing bodies of water aren't especially unusual.
Might wanna start reading studies rather than what a couple people regurgitate on Reddit, regardless of what they're saying. Sometimes they're right but they don't truly know why
They should have had 2 lanes for big trucks run above the lower deck. Only 2 exits and if you have no business in Austin you can bypass city traffic. Keep big trucks out of the city. Former driver as well
I grew up in Boston. The big dig lasted for a majority of my life until I moved for college. And things started failing when it was “complete”. Tunnels leaking and concrete ceiling panels collapsing on drivers. Huge mess.
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The developers want to act right away while Austin is still a hot destination. Boston is an old city, and expects to be around another couple hundred years. The Austin promoters want to cash out quick.
Wow we're at our, why don't we invent a time machine to go back and put it all of the best possible transportation options -- roads, freeways, right of ways for expansion, public transportation (bus, subway, tram/train). 🙄
You got Big Dig money?
All the big dig energy with none of the big dig money.
I wish I could upvote this a few more times!
And 10 years…
lol 10 years? The Big Dig construction started in 1982. It didn’t open until 2003.
So relatively similar to all the road construction we have going on anyways…..
LOL!!!
Maybe a little more than ten years
That’s a bit optimistic. The environmental assessment to the karst and aquifer that exists under the city would take a significant fraction of that time.
Big infrastructure takes this long. Americans are totally against real solutions. Ideally we’d build this with a real train system but both are 5-10 years of pain. There’s no infrastructure project worth doing in 1 year or less at our scale and none of the ones that actually fix our issues are that fast either. Either we commit to a transit overhaul for 5-10 years or we turn into Houston jr.
The Mafia is not big enough here
Austin is one of the richest cities in the U.S. We can also raise taxes
https://www.kut.org/transportation/2024-02-21/your-ultimate-guide-to-the-i-35-expansion-through-central-austin
Shit ain't free.
How much is shit these days?
$Not free
haha....hahahaahahah... HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHHA Oh boy thats a good one.... oh wait, you are serious... you dont know the history of "the big dig"........ You are talking about literally the MOST EXPENSIVE highway project in the history of this nation... and one plagued with not years, but DECADES of fuckups and failures and cost overruns. Like people literally went to prison over corruption charges linked to this project which went on for 20 YEARS. It is literally the case study of when Project Management goes horribly wrong.... and was so even years ago when I took project management and still is so while I am finishing my masters. You know how badly you have to fuck up for a project to be considered THE case study for not just before it was even completed, but a decade and a half after it was?
So when are we doing it?
[Seattle put a highway under their downtown and was not a disaster like in Boston.](https://www.king5.com/article/news/seattle-tunnel-were-lessons-learned-from-bostons-big-dig/281-508ef2fe-9892-4b95-873b-c57339cb6482) This kind of project is not impossible and it just requires a little patience and imagination. We learn from our mistakes after all.
That one did get delayed for two years with a stuck boring machine.
Except you literally glossed over why... Seattles "tunnel" was nowhere near the size of i35 or I93. Its a 4 lane highway where they stacked the lanes into two lanes above and below in the tunnel. >Seattle had the benefit of not having an 8-lane super highway that it had to bury, They also would have to run shallow like they did in Boston and unlike Seattle where the ground allowed for a much deeper tunnel to be buried. But you know, keep armchair engineering something thats been studied in-depth here.
> They also would have to run shallow like they did in Boston and unlike Seattle where the ground allowed for a much deeper tunnel to be buried. Other than the water table, what would be the depth concerns?
Geological stability. We have a crap ton of cave systems and aquifers around this area, which would make tunnels a lot more difficult than in Boston where the ground is pretty solid, yet even there they had challenges. This was actually looked into a couple years back, the idea of tunneling around here for i35 specifically is not a unknown... its just prohibitively expensive. Couple with that some of these caves may very well harbor life never before seen or rarely seen which is not a unknown here. McNeil high school has a cave system under it where they discovered an endangered species of spider of all things which caused serious issues with campus expansion and requires one of their courtyards to be close off to students now.
The Austin cave systems are to the west of the Balcones Fault. I35 is built in the deep clay land that stretches from here to the Gulf of Mexico.
Are you sure? My understanding is that porosity and cave concerns are basically limited to the area along and to the west of the Balcones Fault zone, which roughly tracks Mopac through most of Austin (which is why McNeil had issues during construction, along with some of the overpasses on Mopac). But the segment of I35 through town is actually east of the fault zone, in the much more solid limestone of the Coastal Plain. That limestone IIRC is actually almost ideal for tunneling; dense and solid enough to be self supporting, while still soft enough that TBMs can make good progress. And you don't have to go very deep to get into that good limestone. That's what they said when they bored the Waller Creek Tunnel, that for all the other issues with that project, the actual tunneling went incredibly smooth. There are also a couple of massive infrastructure tunnels currently being cut along Parmer without any apparent cave or void issues, and for all his other (extremely numerous) faults, Musk's Boring Company is here and appears to be poking holes all over the place east of I35.
Edwards Aquifer is very close to the surface (<150 ft) near the Colorado River, so i35 would have to be sunk and capped. It can't be a tunnel like in Seattle without impacting everyone's drinking supply. This doesn't mean it is impossible. It absolutely can be done with minimal overrun and delays using proper engineering, design, and cost estimation. The Big Dig in Boston is considered a failure because it was poorly designed and constructed. Ultimately, corruption led to a lot of inefficient contracts, cut corners, and extremely high maintenance/litigation costs- not because it was ToO CoMpLeX.
Edwards Aquifer and the recharge zone basically stop at the Balcones Fault Zone, which roughly tracks Mopac through Austin.
I'm just making a point that it is very possible to do this type of project and keep it relatively on budget and on schedule. Regardless of the scale of the projects, one went 7% over budget and 20% longer than scheduled, while the other went roughly 500% over budget and 200% longer than planned (and had constant maintenance woes for years after completion).
Except your not. The projects ARENT the same. Seattles was nowhere near the complexity of Bostons and Austin’s while probably not going to be as complex as Bostons is infinitely more than what they did in Seattle.
I lived in Seattle when that thing was getting dug. Buildings in pioneer square were sinking because modern Seattle is built on fill dirt above old Seattle. Wasn’t as big of a disaster, but far from smooth
I also lived in Seattle and worked on the project tangentially as a staff geologist; settling from dewatering was expected, monitored, and mitigated for in an in incredibly smooth fashion IMO. There was a plan in place from the get-go and it worked exactly as it was supposed to.
Dallas capped Woodall Rogers 14 years ago. Houston planning to tear down and cap the Pierce Elevated. Austin’s inability to carry out infrastructure projects keeps it a second tier Texas city
Remember how long it took to sink that tiny portion of the Express lane on Mopac underground a couple years ago? I can't imagine these same people having to do MILES of that.
That tiny part was at the very edge of the Balcones Fault. That hard flint was the reason the land faulted there, back when Pangea broke up. I 35 is east of that mess. You can tell where the problem was because there are cliffs lining the river. On the east side the river is a smooth grade with flood-plane banks.
you should make a netflix documentary about this because i am fascinated by your comment
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMQKK3\_a14M3A-SQdVVWhOfOw8xRUuueJ](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMQKK3_a14M3A-SQdVVWhOfOw8xRUuueJ) There already are a few out there. I am guessing it was not as big a news story around here as it was in the northeast. I95 which the big dig was moving is THE major East Coast artery. It goes from Maine all the way to Florida and right through multiple major cities like Boston, NYC, Philly, Baltimore, Jacksonville etc. I remember as a kid the NYC stations constantly running stories on how much of a shitshow the project was.
Would be so fucking nice to reclaim that land. Let’s use all that tax money we’ve been paying for years for the light rail that doesn’t exist
That cost billions of dollars and took decades to build.
That’s every infrastructure project on a city scale worth doing
We have a metro population of 2.2m. the big dig cost 24billion 15 years ago. In today dollars that is maybe $40b. So it would cost every man woman and child $20,000 each as their share of that one project. Is there any way you can formulate a sales pitch?
Run the project better. But even if we cut it in half it’s still going to be expensive. I10s budget for maintenance in Houston is just 10 billion. This isn’t that bad Edit: this is why trains have a much higher return on investment
Interstate highways are mainly paid from federal funds. A big dig would be a city or state project.
I understand that, that is a bad system of how its done but my point is we have the money. The reason its bad that this is just budget for i10 in one city. This would be budget for i35 in one city. Texas cities need to tax more to overhaul infrastructure but honestly if we could use those state funds they use on roads for txdot we could fix almost all these issues infrastructure wise without increasing taxes. But expanding highways has to be halted.
'we' is not who you think it is. The state has a surplus. The state government is Republican. They are not spending state money in blue cities. They are spending on what benefits rural areas, which includes access to big cities. That they carve up and deface the cities is a huge plus.
This is why I’m the imperative to get active. Texas is nearly blue
>Edit: this is why trains have a much higher return on investment Ah yes those [famously profitable US train projects](https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-subway-biden-administration-grant-california-b8cbf564?st=uom1ixdcnxkrjwp&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink)
U.S. train is irrelevant. NIMBYs and conservatives sabotage them
We can't even get a decent above-ground light-rail system going since they keep shortening it and taking away the actual useful stops from the plan *before they even start building.*
This belongs in r/austincirclejerk
Because, money. It would cost around $7-8,000/LF (assuming a 200' wide highway, 30' below grade) just to dig it out. Then you have to pay for the retention walls on either side, which is about another $8-9,000/LF assuming the same 30' drop on both sides. Then we get to the paving, which is roughly $45/SF or another $9000/LF. We're up to around \~$25,000+/LF of road. Then, if you want to cover it, you're gonna need to add another $15,000/LF to cover the "capping of it". All-in that's roughly $40,000/LF or \~$211,200,000 for every mile, and that's BEFORE contractor markups.
>LF Linear Feet?
yes
That’s about $100 per person in the metro area per mile. You’re actually making it sound feasible. But I’d really rather that money was spent on a quality light rail system.
You’re right but Americans can’t handle infrastructure is expensive and takes a long time
Jesus, come on, they already tried a tunnel downtown, the Waller Creek tunnel and walkway, which ballooned from an original 25 million estimate when it was passed in 1998 to over 150 million by the time they finished it, what, nearly 2020 (it took them over a dozen years of planning to even start to get started)? Just a general lack of attention on everybody's part, from a building blocking the capital view quarter, to improper use of rebar, and crappy concrete, such that the way that the whole system is supposed to work, to mitigate flooding during a sudden rain, it just doesn't.
It is pretty nice being able to stumble from the Union Oyster House to the North End without getting run over
I remember when they spent literal YEARS working on the very short underground tunnel from MOPAC to downtown. Limestone is a bitch. Not gonna happen in our lifetime
Adjusted for inflation the big dig cost 25 billion
Flash flood alley?
I mean, that is effectively what they are proposing with the cap and stich. Big Dig was done partially to get under the river. We could do that if we had the money, though an excavation like that in limestone is going to be even harder than the big dig. Instead they will dig a trench and cover it, gaining back that cover space for a boulevard and parks. Or at least TxDOT is willing to let COA pay to reclaim that space.
Yeah, the flooding infrastructure around there isn’t great. https://austin.eater.com/2014/7/18/6184707/easy-tigers-patio-slammed-by-waller-creek-flash-flood
That was before the flashflood tunnel? I thought there hasn't been any issues since it got built
To be fair, water ingress into tunnels is a pretty well understood engineering issue, which is why tunnels running under actual standing bodies of water aren't especially unusual.
Why don’t they just eliminate I-35. Reddit told me than more lanes = more traffic, so less lanes should = less traffic right?
this, but unironically
We need to eliminate all roads, then I’ll finally be able to drive.
Might wanna start reading studies rather than what a couple people regurgitate on Reddit, regardless of what they're saying. Sometimes they're right but they don't truly know why
Have you been to Houston, biggest car hell hole in the states
This is some grade C clickbait/trolling.
[they kind of... are. ](https://www.kut.org/transportation/2024-02-21/your-ultimate-guide-to-the-i-35-expansion-through-central-austin)
There are natural geological aspects of the area that make that a bad idea.
They should have had 2 lanes for big trucks run above the lower deck. Only 2 exits and if you have no business in Austin you can bypass city traffic. Keep big trucks out of the city. Former driver as well
If I know one thing about that project, it’s that it was very successful and everyone loved it.
I grew up in Boston. The big dig lasted for a majority of my life until I moved for college. And things started failing when it was “complete”. Tunnels leaking and concrete ceiling panels collapsing on drivers. Huge mess.
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Money, a notorious permitting system from the City, limestone (caves), aquifers, and flooding.
Big dig was a complete disaster. No thanks
You payin’?
The people building the project don't give a shit about Austin - they just want to get through as fast and cheap as possible
You are about 6-7 years behind in that thinking. They have been planning and developing how they are going to do just that.
The developers want to act right away while Austin is still a hot destination. Boston is an old city, and expects to be around another couple hundred years. The Austin promoters want to cash out quick.
[we should...](https://youtu.be/Iyn-0af_hlI?si=xO0C3Et68zB6hJWz)
Wow we're at our, why don't we invent a time machine to go back and put it all of the best possible transportation options -- roads, freeways, right of ways for expansion, public transportation (bus, subway, tram/train). 🙄
Limestone
Because what Boston did ended up killing people when it collapsed.