MassDOT's Sumner Tunnel Shutdown Sequel

The Sumner Tunnel restoration project has been going on for some time, and you might remember last summer's closure that lasted nearly two months, causing major delays around Logan Airport and East Boston. MassDOT says they have to shut it down again for a few weeks so crews can get back in there and complete a good chunk of road work without having to worry about traffic or lane closures. Once it's all done, Highway Administrator Jonathan Gulliver says we'll see the light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to the project. He joins Nichole this week to share the details for commuters.

Episode Transcript

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From WBZ News Radio in Boston.This is New England Weekend. Each week
we come together right here talk aboutall the topics important to you and the
place where you live. It's sogood to be back with you again this
week. I'm Nicole Davis. Youlikely remember the shutdown of the Sumner Tunnel
last summer that lasted just about acouple of months. It was a closure
that impacted a lot of commuters fromthe North Shore, Chelsea, East Boston,

(00:29):
the airport, and others, maybeeven you, to try to rethink
about how to get in and outof the city. Now it's time for
extended shutdown to Electric Boogaloo and hisclosure is expected to be half as long
and also the last time for decadesthat this tunnel is going to be shut
down for such an extended time.Let's talk about this. Jonathan Gulliver,
highway administrator at MASTOT, was hereon the show last summer. He broke

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down everything his crews were doing.He's back here now to do it again.
Welcome back, Jonathan. So let'sget to it. Tell us what's
happening here? Why do we needanother big shutdown? Sure? So this
is phase two of a multi phaseproject. And I'll say this is that
anytime we do a big, complicated, multi phase project like this, especially
when the first phase goes well,the attention paid to the second phase usually

(01:14):
drops significantly, and that's what we'reseeing right now. So we're making a
best effort to get the information outthere. We've had numerous public meetings and
have a lot of information up onour website right now and if you go
to Mass five to one one dotcom you can find much of that.
But the gist of the project isthis. The Sumner Tunnel is nearing the
end of its useful lifespan. It'sabout one hundred years old. There were

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two major elements that we look atfrom a structural standpoint that needed to be
rejuvenated in order to extend the lifeof the tunnel. So last year our
focus was on rehabilitating the ceiling structure. That went very very well. That
was a two month closure. Thisyear it's all about doing the substructure or
driving deck of the tunnel, andthat's literally the effectively the bridge that goes

(02:00):
from wet edge of the tunnel tothe other down the entire length and underneath
that is what we call a plenumwhere a lot of the life safety systems,
the drainage, the air everything elseis located. So this year we
did a lot of work based onthe information we gathered over the last year,
and we really worked closely with ourcontractor or engineers, really went through

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the scope of work, and somethingthat we have been really happy about is
that they changed around the approach andwe're able to cut down the closure period
in half. So originally this wasgoing to be exactly like last year at
two month closure. Now it's onlya one month closure. The way that
we were able to accomplish that isagain, if you look at the way

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the tunnel was constructed, it's abridge from edge to edge. There's areas
where that entire section needs to betaken out. We literally will not have
a floor to the tunnel when thatwork is happening. That has to happen
during the full closure, So that'sthe work we're prioritizing. There's other areas
where you're effectively coming in and fixinga much smaller patch of concrete where you're

(03:04):
the rest of the concrete is good, but you might have like a five
foot by five foot patch that youneed to get in and chip out and
replace, and those areas we've restructuredso that those are moved into weekend closures
that are going to happen after thisfull one to month closure. So that
was a really big effort for us, but it's really paid off. We
know that, although very impactful,these weekend closures are far more manageable than

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the long term closure that we're goingto have. So this is going to
all start on July fifth, sobasically right when everything wraps up for everybody's
Fourth of July holiday, our team'sgoing to be getting ready to mobilize into
the tunnel, and starting at midnightthey're going to mobilize in. They're going
to start occupying it and bringing theirequipment to materials and staff in, and

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that starts off a twenty four toseven process all the way through August fifth,
where they're going to just be workingcontinuously on the tunnel getting that work
done. We're hoping that they're goingto make some really good progress, and
they have been so far in theearly prep work enough so that we were
actually able to cut out a coupleof weekend closures ahead of time. Nice,

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but we're hoping that they're going tocontinue to make that progress, and
if they do, that will limitthe number of weekends that we have after
this full closure is done. Soall in all, there's a lot of
work to do, but we've reallymade a really strong effort to make to
limit it as much as possible.Yeah, of course, I know commuter
pain is the last thing you wantto cause, but you're doing this for
a reason. You want to setthis tunnel up for decades more so we

(04:31):
can have it around because we needit. It's a key piece of our
commuting infrastructure here in the city ofBoston. With all the work you've been
doing since last year when all thisstarted up, actually before that, is
it all holding up. Have therebeen any issues essentially with what you've already
done in the previous parts of theproject. Absolutely, the stuff that we've
gotten done so far on so lastyear again being all about the ceiling.

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Yeah, put in those new ledlighting, new camera systems that we have,
all the new life safety systems thatare above the driving surface, those
are all brand new. They've allbeen working really really well. That work,
along with the work that we're doingthis year, is going to effectively
extend the tunnel life by seventy fiveyears or more. And what that'll allow
us to do is is that it'snot mean that this will be maintenance free

(05:15):
during that whole time, but itallows us to return to regular maintenance.
So getting in there doing some cleaning, is doing some minor catch base and
repairs, paving, that sort oftype of thing, just a regular work
that you would normally do on thisagain for about seventy five years before we're
going to have to come back inand do anything major. Again, not
our issue at that point. Itwill not be it'll be somebody's issue,

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but not our issue. Absolutely thebig thing, of course, and you
push this a lot last summer andit seemed to work out well. Just
don't drive, try not to drivedown toward that neck of the woods.
But of course if you have too, you're going to be sitting in traffic.
But you have a lot of alternativestoo, so let's talk about those.
Yeah, there's a ton of reallygood alternatives. It's the same mitigation
package that we put in place lastyear. First and foremost, free blue

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line. Blue line is even morereliable this year than it was last year.
The NBTA has done a lot ofgreat work to reduce those slow zones.
They now have very reliably a fiveto seven minute headway when when the
when the Blue Line is running,so you can get a train pretty quickly
waiting for the Blue Line, whichis again a great option. It will
be free UH through that through thatstretch. We're also doing discounted and free

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parking throughout the entire system, includingBlue Line, Ferry and UH and the
commuter rail for that whole stretch ofNorth Shore. The North Shore train schedules
have been extended, so you're goingto be paying reduced fares for for commuter
rail going all the way out tothe end of the line, and then
the ferry is going to be dependingon which line you're taking, again free

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or discounted pretty heavily. We allall the mitigation packages. They can find
them on both our website as wellas the MBTA's website, so we urge
you to check those out. Lastly, this is this is of course a
major major roadway for Logan Airport andthere's not too many ways in and out
of Logan and something that we havecontinued to stress is that although the summer

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tunnel leaves the airport, it doesimpact regional traffic when it's not available,
because now you've taken one third ofyour capacity out of the system, and
that starts to add up and itstarts to have a domino effect in the
region. So people should expect heavierthan normal regional traffic whether they're going to
or leaving the airport. They needto expect that, and you should plan

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accordingly, and if you can thosetake those other types of services in addition
to that. Silver Line is alwaysa great option, as is Logan Express,
and those are other ways to getin and out of the airport.
They are going to be far easierthan going in your car, So we
really encourage people to avail themselves withthose services. That allows the roadways to

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be as free from congestion as possible, which means that the people who absolutely
have to drive, so a numberof workers who may work vans for example,
some service workers that are off hours, whatever this case may be,
we want to preserve as much pavementspace for them as possible, and really
getting everybody onto those other services willhelp do that. Yeah, and I
remember our big concern last time aroundwas emergency vehicles as well, trying to

(08:15):
get from East Boston from that areaaround the airport into Boston, so I'm
sure you've got a plan for thatas well. We do. We've been
working with the same group we workedwith last year. We're staging an ambulance
again in East Boston to make sureit's available and quickly. We also have
our command center that's going to beset up on July fifth, and that
set up means that we have firstresponders from a variety of different locations,

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but certainly police fire ems as wellas our own staff and state police and
Coast Guard and others. They're allin the same room together. They're all
watching the same camera feeds for theregion, and should there be a major
problem, each one of them canget in touch with their respective teams quickly
and direct them to whatever the problemmay be or around the problem. So
it's something that we know works reallywell, and we're going to be redoing

(09:03):
it again this year, all right. So we're so close to the end
of this project relatively at this point. I mean, we have a summer
to go and a couple of weekendclosures toward the end of the summer into
the fall. But how does itfeel to be looking kind of toward the
you know, not to be acliche here, but the light at the
end of the tunnel for this,it's nice to be in the final stretch.
And I can tell you with ourbusiness there's always something new coming so

(09:26):
our teams. Although we're looking forwardto the end of this one, we
have a lot more in the pipelinethat we're going to be doing. This
is this is going to be themost impactful one for a while though,
thankfully. Yeah, yeah, whatabout the Callahan, By the way,
I've had people ask me that,they say, well, the Callahan's just
about as old. What's going onwith that? So we actually rehab that
about seven years ago. Yeah,So that one is has a little bit,

(09:48):
a little bit more options, soit was far more manageable and it
worked. That was a great project, worked well a bit of the sleeper,
I guess, because I get askedthat question frequently as well. Well,
you know what, that's a goodthing. The fact that it's done
so well that people don't know that'sa good thing. All right. So
again, resources, where can peoplefind them? You said, the list
of all these discounted fairs and freebusses so on and so forth. Remind

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people where they can go, soyou can pretty quickly find them at mass
five to one one dot com.That's our traveler information website. We have
a lot of links up there tothe various project pages, so it's an
easy one to remember. We recommendpeople go there first. Additionally, the
MBTA and Massport each on their websiteas some information as well that you can
find. All Right, beautiful JonathanGulliver from MASTOT, thank you again for

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coming on the show and hope itall goes well for you this summer.
All right, thank you, thanksfor having me. Have a safe and
healthy holiday weekend. Please join meagain next week for another edition of the
show. I'm Nicole Davis from WBZNews Radio on iHeartRadio.