Comments on: PennDOT To Use Eminent Domain To Once Again Displace Northeasterners Who Haven’t Left Their Neighborhoods Since 1980?

By: JP215

JP215 — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:05:44 +0000

Actually a lot of the problem in Boston was flat out shady contractors. They took old concrete and cement, smashed it up, and mixed it in with the new concrete. When somebody was doing the math on how thick to make walls and ceilings, they based it on using actual concrete…. not concrete mixed with trash.
People major in Materials Engineering because they try to optimize the strength to weight (to cost?) ratios. Those formulas are not supposed to be fouled with by some creep trying to make a few extra bucks.

By: C. The Impaler

C. The Impaler — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:17:56 +0000

Well, it’d be less complicated than Boston’s big dig, since you would be doing as much, if any underwater construction. Yeah, things got more expensive than they should have been when contractors say, read the blueprints upside down so installed some parts of the underwater tunnel backwards, and people have died because of contractors going on the cheap with faulty ceiling sealant. All that said, underground construction is still mighty expensive, and they’d probably still have to grab some land to widen things. It’s hard to build new tunnels underground and expect a residential structure to stay standing. The cool thing is 95 could be turned into greenspace, like the ground above Boston’s tunnels.

By: JP215

JP215 — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:26:50 +0000

What about the multiple ideas to bury 95 in the city? i can only assume that will not happen that far north, but it’s a must below the Ben Franklin Bridge. The elevated sections are scheduled for replacement in the next 10 years anyway, and we saw how some parts may not even make it that long.
Let’s just NOT hire those contractors from Boston.