carwreck.com: around Boston harbor...

I up on my friend's roof on North Washington Street last night to see if there was still traffic travelling north on the elevated highway. When it was obvious that the road was empty it was easy to conclude that traffic was being allowed to drive the new Central Artery tunnel. We piled in a car at about 2am and headed south on I93 from the Causeway Street entrance ramp. Traffic was light and it was easy to see that in some places the northbound lanes were in fact completely blocked by construction cones. Taking exit 18, we took a quick U turn across the bridge near Frontage Road and headed onto the new, raised northbound lanes as we headed back towards Downtown. The signs looked modern and the road was fresh with rough concrete; we were excited!

The road curved to the right and it was clear that we were far to the East of where the old road was as we then plunged downward towards a glowing, orange orb that was the entrance to the new tunnel. The brightness of the amber lights in the first hundred yards was overwhelming but the quick change to a lower intensity white lighting allowed us to start looking around at the walls of the new tunnel. It looked surprisingly similar to the old tunnels around Boston with a similar color scheme to the tiling yet everything was bright, clean and shiny. There even were electronic signs flashing us a welcome to the new I93 tunnel. We tried to estimate where we were under downtown but were horribly mistaken when suddenly the road curved up and we emerged next the the Fleet Center with the Zakim Bridge stretched out before us in all of its glowing, blue glory. The bridge was a surreal finish to our first trip through the new Central Artery. It was like being in a cage, with all of the suspension wires crisscrossing in different directions. It was beautiful and we cheered.

Dipping off the highway at Sullivan Square, we headed back towards North Washington Street with a quick stop to drop me off in Charlestown. I had taken my first ride through the Big Dig. It had only lasted about 5 minutes but it was worth the wait.

No far! You folks should have grabbed me! ^_^

Sorry Greg. It was a spur of the moment thing. We looked outside, saw that there was no traffic on the old road, and headed out to the car.