By Jonathan Walters

For those who’ve been following the now-national saga of Boston’s infamous Big Dig — the big-ticket waterfront highway project famous for its cost overruns — the recent news shouldn’t come as much of a surprise: According to Deloitte & Touche, the project is going to cost close to $14 billion, which is even more than the previous estimate, which was even more than the previous estimate, which was even more than the previous estimate, which was....

You get the idea. Cost-estimate increases for the Big Dig — a project that involves burying the city’s infamous raised north-south waterfront interstate known as the Central Artery — have been as regular as Red Sox losing streaks. What’s surprising is that anybody is surprised. I first toured the Big Dig project eight years ago, when ground was just being broken. At the time I was told by straight-faced project managers that the Big Dig would probably come in at somewhere around $5.5 billion (up from the initial estimate of $3.1 billion, incidentally). I had to stifle a good guffaw.

Even back in the early 1990s, it was obvious that the project was going to cost twice that anyway, involving massive construction and all that is involved — materials, equipment, manpower, logistics, legal battles, rerouting of roads and utilities, and probably a little incidental cash here and there just to grease the wheels.

It was also obvious that whatever the project cost, it was going to be worth it. The 1960s and the 1970s saw the utter devastation of cities — waterfronts in particular — by interstate highway construction. My adoptive hometown of Albany ran a double-decker interstate across its own Hudson River waterfront, thereby destroying in one sweep the city’s most valuable real estate asset and quality of life. A truly prescient piece of urban planning.

Whatever the Big Dig ends up costing will be paid back many times over in recovered real estate and the development investment and quality of life and urban vitality that follow. Boston, already a great city, is going to be transformed once it finishes tearing down its hideous and isolating Central Artery.

And so what the Big Dig should teach transportation and urban planners nationwide isn’t that these projects are too expensive to do. Amortized over the life of the project, the cost of the Big Dig is a pittance when compared with what we spend on transportation each year; this country is awash in transportation money. Rather, what the Big Dig should teach transportation and urban planners nationwide is that it’s OK to think big, and it’s OK to spend money on big, wonderful projects that undo the worst of the damage of the interstate highway construction era.

Jonathan Walters is a staff correspondent for Governing.

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