Boston Tunnels Undergo Enhanced Inspections After Falling Concrete Incident
From falling debris to flood waters, drivers traveling through Boston’s tunnels have encountered significant causes for concern. Over the past year, incidents in Boston’s tunnels have included a chunk of…
Downtown Boston Massachusetts turnpike at night. This image is taken using a slow shutter speed so that the lights of passing cars blur together. The lights of the cars seem to form lines of light going down the road.
From falling debris to flood waters, drivers traveling through Boston's tunnels have encountered significant causes for concern.
Over the past year, incidents in Boston's tunnels have included a chunk of concrete falling in the Prudential Tunnel in February, a multi-car fire, and flooding that rushed into the Ted Williams Tunnel with several feet of water.
Several Boston media outlets, including 7 News Boston, requested copies of inspection reports for several tunnels, including the Prudential Tunnel, from the last few years. Reports dated from 2021 to 2024 detailed "widespread areas of active leakage," chipped concrete, and cracks in essential areas that support hanging elements in the Prudential Tunnel.
7 News spoke with former Boston transportation commissioner and Massachusetts Turnpike Authority tunnel superintendent John Vitagliano. According to Vitagliano, problems such as growing cracks and leaks are indicators that larger problems are lurking in the tunnels.
“The one word that stands out in my mind is leakage because leakage is a major cause of so many of the potential threats we see in tunnel systems,” he said. “There is not a tunnel in the world that is built on the water that doesn't have some kind of minor leakage, but that's what a good inspector, maintenance system, is supposed to do is to identify those and catch them before they get out of hand.”
Jonathan Gulliver, MassDOT's highway administrator, emphasized to 7 News that tunnels are safe and that maintenance is conducted regularly.
Of the issues that surfaced in recent inspection reports, MassDOT confirmed that several were fixed. Approximately 75% of the problems are in the process of being repaired, he said. MassDOT noted that some of the issues identified in the Prudential Tunnel are under the purview of Air Rights tenants, which develop and lease property over the tunnel.
Gulliver said that MassDOT has changed its policies for some tunnel inspections. Traditionally, inspectors examine certain joints in the tunnel during the spring, but they now will perform inspections earlier in the year in response to weather pattern shifts rather than changes in seasons.
