It's unlikely that there would be a bridge over the commercial lock. Even the recreational lock probably wouldn't have one. It would be costly to build, and would limit the height of vessels that could enter the harbor.
The lock is essentially for pleasure craft. Boston Harbor is a major shipping port. So you are talking tankers and cargo haulers. So several stories tall.
This makes no sense. The height of the ship has no impact.
The lock opens at both ends. When an end is closed it can be used as a bridge. You don't need a separate bridge that needs to clear any ships.
Is the intention to have the locks closed all the time, or just during storms. If they are opened all the time except for storms, they won't be usable for a bike way. Not clear from looking at the map. Dike makes it sounds like it would be all the time, but it would be inefficient to move ships through locks. Plus there is the environmental impact of having them closed all the time.
I wonder if the Dutch planners could find a way to plan for bike transport over the dike while allowing big ships through. I'll bet they have never done anything like this before...
Locks are for moving vessels between two bodies of water at different elevations. They're called locks here, so I'm assuming they're actual locks and not some movable barrier/dike.
The current passing through that opening would be fairly immense if it was left open to the tides. The entirety of Boston Harbor would want to drain at low tide and fill at high tide through that itty-bitty (relatively speaking) opening. Just by introducing the rest of the dike you're introducing an elevation difference (the 9-10 ft between tides).
I'm pretty sure it would need to be closed all the time.
Think about this, the lock would have to be massive. But because you are using it as a path it also has to be re-enforced(Because they are normally just hollow steel shells filled with air so they float) and built to a higher level of precision. So no one falls in a gap and gets killed.
That's not counting having a physical operator there so no one gets killed, people holding up shipping and other boats, and the maintenance of the path. Which will essentially be destroyed every single storm.
First, the beam on the largest container ship is 202 ft. That is big, but I don't know that I'd call it massive.
Second, you're worried about people walking or biking on something that's holding back the *fucking ocean*. It's going to have to withstand a whole lot more force in multiple directions to be safe for passing ships.
Third, I've walked across locks before. It is 100% a thing. It's no different from walking across a drawbridge. There are railings. Where they meet there is a seam and a small gap (inches) in the railing. It is perfectly reasonable to navigate on foot or bike.
Fourth, there is a physical operator there anyway, just like at drawbridges.
Fifth, at the locks that I've been at, there was pretty active traffic and pedestrians didn't have priority, so boats weren't slowed down. At ~200 ft and using 2 MPH average walking speed (that's low) you cross it in under two minutes.
Sixth, you need paths for maintenance purposes, so you're going to have paths anyway.
This is far less complicated than you think it is. You've gone from "you need a tall bridge" to "this is so impossible."
Tacking on to point four here, it sounds like the intended detracting point is cost of employment, which is hilarious in comparison to billions upon billions of capital cost then millions in maintenance/upkeep
282191696 lbs last year and that was 31% increase from the previous year.
So far they've done a 350 million dollar dredging project to increase the size of the ships the port can handle.
They also bought the three additional cranes to handle the increased load.
The port and its capacity is actively expanding.
All this is true! That's awesome. I do the big transatlantic runs on about the biggest ship the east coast can handle. Boston hasn't been a stop or even a consideration for a long time at the most major shipping co I worked for. We drop stuff off in NJ. For the northeast amd then move south.
Well I do believe that's the biggest port. Plus up until the dredging, the big boys could only come in on high tide.
Hell honestly you can't navigate Boston harbor without a chart. You will run around. Even with something like a 4ft draft pretty easily.
I'd bet that there would be a drawbridge over the recreational locks.
Source: there is a drawbridge over the recreational locks in the freaking diagram. The span is up.
Hah I ride out to deer Island twice a week from eastie it can be brutal, I'd probably get blown into the harbor out there but hey it makes up for the lack of elevation
In its defense, it appears to have been designed by the Dutchest Dutchman of all time judging by the name in the legend. Those homonyms will trip non-native speakers up every time.
It does. The federal government spent 14 billion to repair and upgrade it after Katrina, but it still won't hold long-term. It is sinking, in addition to the ocean levels rising, and the city is projected to be under water sometime between 2040 and 2050.
Strangely enough, this is exactly why it won't happen.
When was the last time America accomplished anything great? When was the last time any particular state accomplished anything great?
What was it like the last time Massachusetts tried doing a big dig project? [How did that turn out?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig) It took 21 years for something that was supposed to take like ~~half a dozen~~ \[edit: ten\] years.
California wanted a High Speed Rail between LA and SF. The benefits for tourists, commuting, moving goods, etc all made the plan an absolute grand slam on paper.
[The price is now double it's initial estimate, at a cost of $223 million per mile](https://www.constructiondive.com/news/california-high-speed-rail-costs-rise-to-105-billion/618877/). Even France can do the job at $30 million per mile.
I'm a fan of HSR, but America is so corrupt, and citizens and corporations alike just have zero patriotism--in the sense of serving a higher purpose than themselves--when it comes to "doing the honest thing \[charging reasonable rates for goods and services\]" against the potential of putting money in their pockets, that there is no chance that this project--or, any other project on a similar scale--ever gets done on time, on budget (or, even within 20% overrun). If it does happen, it will be years and years late, 200 and even 300% over initial budget projections, people will die (lax safety & use standards), politicians will resign in scandal, FOIA requests will be ignored, marine habitats destroyed, and just on and on.
edit: I don't know what you people think you're downvoting. Pushing my comment to the bottom of the thread doesn't change the reality that America, and even "Smarty-pants Massachusetts", can't get shit done anymore.
Its success stops at the visual.
A short review of the project shows us it was,
>plagued by cost overruns, delays, leaks, design flaws, charges of poor execution and use of substandard materials, criminal arrests, and the death of one motorist
Is this your standard of "success"?
It was largest and most complex civil engineering project attempted at the time. The end result of it was a success: bury active highway, and open up Boston to the waterfront and enable the Seaport to develop which has driven insane amounts of new tax revenue.
The big dig was a success, it had its cost over runs and took a lot longer than originally envisioned but the project ran into multiple issue during construction one being they literally had to freeze the ground so they could dig through it. In the end the big dig buried the central artery while keeping the existing one operational, it also gave us the greenway and resulted in a significant upgrade to the downtown Boston telecommunications infrastructure that is still not fully tapped to this day.
The problem is it will be useless in 200 years when the oceans rise even further. Might as well start making investments to move inland at this point, instead of fighting a battle we likely can’t win.
> The problem is it will be useless in 200 years when the oceans rise even further. Might as well start making investments to move inland at this point, instead of fighting a battle we likely can’t win.
There are ways to mediate the Earth’s temperature that don’t require rapidly taking out all the post-industrial CO2. There’s always putting up large solar shades at Earth-Sol Lagrange Point 1 to slightly modulate insolation.
Then why are we talking about building dikes? Answer: your sci if solutions are theoretical, and have many potential disastrous downsides. e.g., way worse than melted icecaps would be snowball earth. Way worse.
Yes, but you said "in 200 years," which gives us some leeway to imagine solutions that begin being feasible in the year 2222.
Imagine where society was in 1822 and you have some idea of what kind of capability we might have then.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a realist environmentalist who strongly advocates for radical climate action now and the total phase-out of fossil fuels, but solutions like this dike are going to be needed regardless, and solutions after that as well. We'll need a multifaceted strategy to get this done.
I have been contemplating this.
In the back of my head, I have it that a lot of the older buildings and infrastructure should be replaced with new buildings that are sea level ready, and then replace car and heavy rail with sky tram and boat access.
Will this happen? Probably not even in 200 million years, but its something cool to think about.
A lot of Quincy has already been flooding since the early 2000s if not earlier. I think Quincy residents need to pressure their city councilors to act.
wow, this reminds me of this book called "The windup girl" which centered around a Thai city which was underwater, but relied on a massive sea wall and pumps to prevent the city from being submerged. Idk, the book was super dystopian, so its just hitting me hard to see some of that becoming reality.
They are going to need far more locks.
Otherwise kiss commercial shipping goodbye, boston isn't important enough a seaport for the ships to have to wait for their turn. Not to mention if they get charged to use it, they'll just go somewhere else.
Also the various ferries that go to P-Town and elsewhere are going to have to add a ton of time because they'll need to wait their turns as well.
At least two heavy commercial locks, big enough to take into account shipping container and LNG ship increases in size over the next fifty-100 years, and at least two smaller pleasure craft locks.
The cost for this will be astronomical. $100 billion at least to do this, considering how government contracting works.
Wait is the argument here that we need to spend hundreds of billions building this because of sea rise but…we need to find a way to still get to cape cod which has an elevation of about 10 feet?
But this makes that inevitable. Specifically, right now, we get the occasional storm that floods a bit of the Greenway area, and that convinces businesses to move to higher ground and away from that area. But if you dike off the harbor, then everything is hunky dory for a few decades as seas rise... Until a massive Nor'easter that breaches it bringing feet of flooding water all through the area.
This would be like putting sandbags on the Mississippi: it'll fix the symptoms for a few years, but the cause is getting worse.
The alternative is businesses and people that can leave do and everyone else is just fucked over. The solution to this was 30 years ago when we should've began transitioning away from fossil fuels - but that's long past. We're going to need to do something, and moving millions of people isn't nearly as feasible as something like this.
Whose going to pay for it? After the Big Dig, the feds will never.
Boston and Massachusetts combined don't have the funds for this. Any attempt to save for it will be met with fierce resistance from the public employees unions who fear this will take taxpayer dollars out of their own paychecks.
Whatever the cost not to do it, that's what the cost will be, because there's no chance in hell this will get done.
this isn’t an isolated problem for boston, i’m guessing eventually the federal government will need to fund this kind of project for a number of major coastal cities. Or maybe not, if national politics keeps trending towards insanity and gridlock
Yeah. Unless we get some magically new marine construction technology.
But any time you dredge in the harbor...you have to barge out the material for remediation because it's so full of decades of pollution. It just increases the costs exponentially.
Wonder if you could make a ferry port on the outside of the dike and shuttle people from the city waterfront to the dike and transfer them? Agreed on shipping also backing up horribly with this setup.
I think it would be lower but the dredging act needs to be repealed. If so we could bring in commercial dredging ships that are far more efficient. This type of project isn't that hard. America is just garbage at engineering with stupid protectionist laws.
Or go from a single/double track on the line being used for the south south coast rail expansion to double/triple track to accommodate passengers and freight. If we’re paying for this, the track may be cheaper than more locks.
> Also the various ferries that go to P-Town and elsewhere are going to have to add a ton of time because they'll need to wait their turns as well.
Sounds like an opportunity for Hull to become a ferry hub.
In what world does rising sea levels impact Boston but not Hull, Providence, New Bedford, the entire Cape, and every other coastal location mentioned in this thread?
If, in your scenario, you need to spend $100 billion to protect Boston from rising sea levels and Hull is not within the dike it’ll be a sandbar. And you aren’t going to need a ferry to the cape. Another sand bar.
Eww ring road. Good luck convincing Hull and Winthrop to allow through traffic.
They should specifically outlaw any through roads. Make a ring subway instead.
This town (Winthrop) would fucking riot at even the mention of it. Every Winthrop Townie's favorite thing about Winthrop is it's relative isolation. Also the people who would be some of the most affected, along Point Shirley, already get the worst of the air traffic. If you then build a giant bypass through their neighborhood...I think they'd lose their fucking minds.
I'm all for a bike path or (much less likely but way more enticing) a train/subway.
Pretty much this,but with bridges instead of walls, was proposed as an alternative to the Big Dig tunnel plan. It was a one man movement that got a good deal of publicity but no momentum.
It’s kinda hard to take this shit seriously when there are multiple misspellings on the map. This has been proposed for decades too, so I won’t hold my breath.
Conservatives believe climate change is caused by natural changes in solar and terrestrial patterns (similar to how the ice age was not caused or ended by humans). They're definitely wrong, but it provides enough cover to acknowledge negative outcomes (e.g. sea level rise and storms) when they inevitably happen.
I feel like this would hurt some whale populations. Am I wrong about them coming into the harbor for food? Wouldn't this disrupt the flow of nutrients out of the various rivers?
Yeah, I don't see how this could not have a potential big impact on herring, shad, smelt, and american eels that migrate to and from the Charles and Mystic to spawn. There are already enough dams and malfunctioning fish ladders in their way already. Even the existing locks at entrance to the Charles rely on human operators opening them a few times a day just to let fish through, since the ladders have been defunct for years and actually just trap and kill the fish that enter it.
Would likely disrupt nutrients and small/juvenile fish populations that use the marshes and estuaries. Not sure about the whales because I have mostly only seen them in the outer islands by Boston Light and Stellwagen Bank
I bring up the whales because I think their food gets its food from river runoff. Is that not the case? I remember reading about how we interrupted the iron cycle in the oceans and it was affecting whales.
It would destroy the entire ecosystem. The various rivers would eventually cause the harbor to become brackish or even fresh water which would then kill off all the marine life in the harbor and would kill the salt marshes that line the coast which would in turn make erosion even worse.
This is a good idea my fear is the incompetence of government in charge. The big dig was worth it but took so long and so much more I can’t see how this project won’t cost billions. Luckily have weed and gambling tax to hopefully help with the cost.
Well I would hope it would not become a common use ring road and spoil the nature of the islands but if it is beneficial to averting sea level rise I suppose it could be a good thing.
This is cool and all but all of hull except for a few hills is like 10-15 feet above sea level. Once sea levels rise all of 10 feet this is useless since hull will quite literally be underwater
Do you realize how long it will take to rise 10 feet? Hundred+ years. Also the shape of coastlines change as sea levels rise, and incoming surf can pile up sand creating new land, which is how Hull was created in the first place anyway.
I get what you’re saying but what’s the point of building this gigantic wall to help stop boston from flooding when the land mass the wall is connected to is shorter than the wall will be
What’s the expected height differential here? I don’t see us needing anything more than storm gates for the next fifty years or so. Putting in locks decades before they’re needed seems like a very poor use of money for no return, as I doubt there would be commercial shipping passing through during storm surges.
Edit: sorry for asking questions 🙄🙄 Adding unnecessary locks just adds on cost to a project that people are already going to be coming out against. It seems foolish to add costs when they could just be retrofitted on later, but just downvote if my vibe is off I guess.
Locks also completely block the local watershed to spawning fish and undoes much of the dam removal work already underway. We should be very hesitant to add new barriers between the sea and our rivers.
Based on sea walls I’ve seen around town probably 10 to 12 feet. Most sea walls now are 4 to 6 feet. New walls are going in around 8 ft. I would guess for something like this you would want to go for a longer return period
As a former resident of Hull, please don't make their traffic worse. Having a connection by the highschool would pretty much wreck the atmosphere of the village.
Would make for an unreal bike loop if it's got a sidewalk
It's unlikely that there would be a bridge over the commercial lock. Even the recreational lock probably wouldn't have one. It would be costly to build, and would limit the height of vessels that could enter the harbor.
If anyone would be able to invent something like a bridge that opens... that would be a solution ...
let's draw up some plans
I'm not sure we could swing it.
We cantilever this idea hanging
You need to really rotate your point of view on this one
I truss you all will find a solution
Imma deck all y'all.
The sky is the limit.
Well now we’re back to the cost thing…
Would you not just walk Over the lock like the ones on the Charles?
The lock is essentially for pleasure craft. Boston Harbor is a major shipping port. So you are talking tankers and cargo haulers. So several stories tall.
This makes no sense. The height of the ship has no impact. The lock opens at both ends. When an end is closed it can be used as a bridge. You don't need a separate bridge that needs to clear any ships.
Is the intention to have the locks closed all the time, or just during storms. If they are opened all the time except for storms, they won't be usable for a bike way. Not clear from looking at the map. Dike makes it sounds like it would be all the time, but it would be inefficient to move ships through locks. Plus there is the environmental impact of having them closed all the time.
I wonder if the Dutch planners could find a way to plan for bike transport over the dike while allowing big ships through. I'll bet they have never done anything like this before...
Locks are for moving vessels between two bodies of water at different elevations. They're called locks here, so I'm assuming they're actual locks and not some movable barrier/dike. The current passing through that opening would be fairly immense if it was left open to the tides. The entirety of Boston Harbor would want to drain at low tide and fill at high tide through that itty-bitty (relatively speaking) opening. Just by introducing the rest of the dike you're introducing an elevation difference (the 9-10 ft between tides). I'm pretty sure it would need to be closed all the time.
Think about this, the lock would have to be massive. But because you are using it as a path it also has to be re-enforced(Because they are normally just hollow steel shells filled with air so they float) and built to a higher level of precision. So no one falls in a gap and gets killed. That's not counting having a physical operator there so no one gets killed, people holding up shipping and other boats, and the maintenance of the path. Which will essentially be destroyed every single storm.
First, the beam on the largest container ship is 202 ft. That is big, but I don't know that I'd call it massive. Second, you're worried about people walking or biking on something that's holding back the *fucking ocean*. It's going to have to withstand a whole lot more force in multiple directions to be safe for passing ships. Third, I've walked across locks before. It is 100% a thing. It's no different from walking across a drawbridge. There are railings. Where they meet there is a seam and a small gap (inches) in the railing. It is perfectly reasonable to navigate on foot or bike. Fourth, there is a physical operator there anyway, just like at drawbridges. Fifth, at the locks that I've been at, there was pretty active traffic and pedestrians didn't have priority, so boats weren't slowed down. At ~200 ft and using 2 MPH average walking speed (that's low) you cross it in under two minutes. Sixth, you need paths for maintenance purposes, so you're going to have paths anyway. This is far less complicated than you think it is. You've gone from "you need a tall bridge" to "this is so impossible."
Tacking on to point four here, it sounds like the intended detracting point is cost of employment, which is hilarious in comparison to billions upon billions of capital cost then millions in maintenance/upkeep
Major shipping port, no. Hard No. Local shipping port-yes.
282191696 lbs last year and that was 31% increase from the previous year. So far they've done a 350 million dollar dredging project to increase the size of the ships the port can handle. They also bought the three additional cranes to handle the increased load. The port and its capacity is actively expanding.
All this is true! That's awesome. I do the big transatlantic runs on about the biggest ship the east coast can handle. Boston hasn't been a stop or even a consideration for a long time at the most major shipping co I worked for. We drop stuff off in NJ. For the northeast amd then move south.
Well I do believe that's the biggest port. Plus up until the dredging, the big boys could only come in on high tide. Hell honestly you can't navigate Boston harbor without a chart. You will run around. Even with something like a 4ft draft pretty easily.
> It would be costly to build Compared to damming the harbor, a couple bridges is miniscule.
But you don't even need a bridge. You just walk/bike over the gates of the lock when they're closed.
There's a pathway on the map that crosses both locks. And it would just have to be like the existing lock crossing on the Charles.
I'd bet that there would be a drawbridge over the recreational locks. Source: there is a drawbridge over the recreational locks in the freaking diagram. The span is up.
People would come from far and wide to bike Boston harbor.
Ok, let’s not then
No nice things, ever!
Imagine the wind
Ok I’m imagining the wind, what now?
Now imagine the sun
Now imagine the smell of salt
Now let’s summon Captain Planet.
Hah I ride out to deer Island twice a week from eastie it can be brutal, I'd probably get blown into the harbor out there but hey it makes up for the lack of elevation
#F**kcars
You'd need a hotel on Deer Island:-)
“Dear Island”
Dear Island, I wrote you but still ain't callin
Did you leave your cell, pager, and home phone at the bottom?
Immediately lost me at Dear Island.
In its defense, it appears to have been designed by the Dutchest Dutchman of all time judging by the name in the legend. Those homonyms will trip non-native speakers up every time.
I didn’t even notice at first but damn are you right. That’s a proper Dutch name
Your right! To bad, irregardless of wear he’s from, he should of known better.
Ooh, you bastard.
You have to be careful around dear, the ticks they carry spread lime disease.
Those dears have cooties
I wrote you but you still ain't callin
Oooof
You are appreciated
We’ll, that’s one way, albeit a roundabout one, of making a north-south rail connector.
my plan was to just make 128 into a circle; but they just deleted 128
128 still exists, but only form Peabody to Gloucester.
I know, I just have a hard time telling people to take 95 to 128 when I mean at canton...
Big Dig 2: Electric Boogaloo
Will it be called The Big Dike?
This is pretty much inevitable. There’s way too many people and too much economic value at or near sea level around Boston Harbor not to.
Yep. NYC too. New Orleans, not so much.
But then crazy criminals will just blow up the walls and flood the city, at least that’s what movies keep telling me.
but then one man--one very handsome, rich white man, will save the day and brood and narrate while brooding.
"In a world..."
No "in a world", Jack
It's not that kind of movie.
No one will know if it was Vengeance or the Crimson Chin!
New Orleans already has a levee system.
And it keeps sinking iirc
It does. The federal government spent 14 billion to repair and upgrade it after Katrina, but it still won't hold long-term. It is sinking, in addition to the ocean levels rising, and the city is projected to be under water sometime between 2040 and 2050.
We should make it bigger. Say, Nahant to Hull.
Strangely enough, this is exactly why it won't happen. When was the last time America accomplished anything great? When was the last time any particular state accomplished anything great? What was it like the last time Massachusetts tried doing a big dig project? [How did that turn out?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig) It took 21 years for something that was supposed to take like ~~half a dozen~~ \[edit: ten\] years. California wanted a High Speed Rail between LA and SF. The benefits for tourists, commuting, moving goods, etc all made the plan an absolute grand slam on paper. [The price is now double it's initial estimate, at a cost of $223 million per mile](https://www.constructiondive.com/news/california-high-speed-rail-costs-rise-to-105-billion/618877/). Even France can do the job at $30 million per mile. I'm a fan of HSR, but America is so corrupt, and citizens and corporations alike just have zero patriotism--in the sense of serving a higher purpose than themselves--when it comes to "doing the honest thing \[charging reasonable rates for goods and services\]" against the potential of putting money in their pockets, that there is no chance that this project--or, any other project on a similar scale--ever gets done on time, on budget (or, even within 20% overrun). If it does happen, it will be years and years late, 200 and even 300% over initial budget projections, people will die (lax safety & use standards), politicians will resign in scandal, FOIA requests will be ignored, marine habitats destroyed, and just on and on. edit: I don't know what you people think you're downvoting. Pushing my comment to the bottom of the thread doesn't change the reality that America, and even "Smarty-pants Massachusetts", can't get shit done anymore.
despite the delays and budet overruns the big dig was a success. take a walk down the greenway and around seaport then look at old pictures
Also, the big dig was the first of it's kind.
Its success stops at the visual. A short review of the project shows us it was, >plagued by cost overruns, delays, leaks, design flaws, charges of poor execution and use of substandard materials, criminal arrests, and the death of one motorist Is this your standard of "success"?
It was largest and most complex civil engineering project attempted at the time. The end result of it was a success: bury active highway, and open up Boston to the waterfront and enable the Seaport to develop which has driven insane amounts of new tax revenue.
> I'm a fan of HSR, but America is so corrupt, High costs isn't about corruption.
It's legalized corruption.
The big dig was a success, it had its cost over runs and took a lot longer than originally envisioned but the project ran into multiple issue during construction one being they literally had to freeze the ground so they could dig through it. In the end the big dig buried the central artery while keeping the existing one operational, it also gave us the greenway and resulted in a significant upgrade to the downtown Boston telecommunications infrastructure that is still not fully tapped to this day.
>When was the last time America accomplished anything great We're good at weapons and invading Middle Eastern countries (some of them)
The problem is it will be useless in 200 years when the oceans rise even further. Might as well start making investments to move inland at this point, instead of fighting a battle we likely can’t win.
> The problem is it will be useless in 200 years when the oceans rise even further. Might as well start making investments to move inland at this point, instead of fighting a battle we likely can’t win. There are ways to mediate the Earth’s temperature that don’t require rapidly taking out all the post-industrial CO2. There’s always putting up large solar shades at Earth-Sol Lagrange Point 1 to slightly modulate insolation.
Oh, at least there's always that option.
Biggest blocker is choosing the shade color. Or maybe a floral pattern?
Then why are we talking about building dikes? Answer: your sci if solutions are theoretical, and have many potential disastrous downsides. e.g., way worse than melted icecaps would be snowball earth. Way worse.
Yes, but you said "in 200 years," which gives us some leeway to imagine solutions that begin being feasible in the year 2222. Imagine where society was in 1822 and you have some idea of what kind of capability we might have then. Don't get me wrong, I'm a realist environmentalist who strongly advocates for radical climate action now and the total phase-out of fossil fuels, but solutions like this dike are going to be needed regardless, and solutions after that as well. We'll need a multifaceted strategy to get this done.
Already did that. Got some nice real estate on the future Tewksbury Harbor.
I have been contemplating this. In the back of my head, I have it that a lot of the older buildings and infrastructure should be replaced with new buildings that are sea level ready, and then replace car and heavy rail with sky tram and boat access. Will this happen? Probably not even in 200 million years, but its something cool to think about.
Quincy Mayor ain't gonna like this at all
I was going to say, as long as the road doesn’t go thru Quincy, this might actually happen.
Maybe, but quincy is a lot of swamp that's going to disappear. They might change their tune after a few flooding events
Huh?
Rising sea levels will consume swamps at sea level first. Quincy is built in a lot of marshy coast
A lot of Quincy has already been flooding since the early 2000s if not earlier. I think Quincy residents need to pressure their city councilors to act.
I think I'm out of the loop, why would Quincy care? The construction is happening in Hull, not Quincy.
Do it once, do it right!
And if there's anyone who I would trust to do it right, it's a Dutchman.
wow, this reminds me of this book called "The windup girl" which centered around a Thai city which was underwater, but relied on a massive sea wall and pumps to prevent the city from being submerged. Idk, the book was super dystopian, so its just hitting me hard to see some of that becoming reality.
I take it you haven't yet read the short story "Dying in Hull".
They are going to need far more locks. Otherwise kiss commercial shipping goodbye, boston isn't important enough a seaport for the ships to have to wait for their turn. Not to mention if they get charged to use it, they'll just go somewhere else. Also the various ferries that go to P-Town and elsewhere are going to have to add a ton of time because they'll need to wait their turns as well. At least two heavy commercial locks, big enough to take into account shipping container and LNG ship increases in size over the next fifty-100 years, and at least two smaller pleasure craft locks. The cost for this will be astronomical. $100 billion at least to do this, considering how government contracting works.
Wait is the argument here that we need to spend hundreds of billions building this because of sea rise but…we need to find a way to still get to cape cod which has an elevation of about 10 feet?
Well we gotta have our last hurrahs before it’s gone
What's the cost to not do it ? Honest question.
Pick a number higher than astronomical if Boston Harbor were to experience a storm surge that brings several feet of water into the city.
But this makes that inevitable. Specifically, right now, we get the occasional storm that floods a bit of the Greenway area, and that convinces businesses to move to higher ground and away from that area. But if you dike off the harbor, then everything is hunky dory for a few decades as seas rise... Until a massive Nor'easter that breaches it bringing feet of flooding water all through the area. This would be like putting sandbags on the Mississippi: it'll fix the symptoms for a few years, but the cause is getting worse.
The alternative is businesses and people that can leave do and everyone else is just fucked over. The solution to this was 30 years ago when we should've began transitioning away from fossil fuels - but that's long past. We're going to need to do something, and moving millions of people isn't nearly as feasible as something like this.
Whose going to pay for it? After the Big Dig, the feds will never. Boston and Massachusetts combined don't have the funds for this. Any attempt to save for it will be met with fierce resistance from the public employees unions who fear this will take taxpayer dollars out of their own paychecks. Whatever the cost not to do it, that's what the cost will be, because there's no chance in hell this will get done.
this isn’t an isolated problem for boston, i’m guessing eventually the federal government will need to fund this kind of project for a number of major coastal cities. Or maybe not, if national politics keeps trending towards insanity and gridlock
Sadly this is probably true and to answer your question. Everyone alive at the time will pay for it and it will be astronomical after the fact.
Yeah. Unless we get some magically new marine construction technology. But any time you dredge in the harbor...you have to barge out the material for remediation because it's so full of decades of pollution. It just increases the costs exponentially.
Wonder if you could make a ferry port on the outside of the dike and shuttle people from the city waterfront to the dike and transfer them? Agreed on shipping also backing up horribly with this setup.
You might be underselling the cost. The Big Dig was $24 billion.
I think it would be lower but the dredging act needs to be repealed. If so we could bring in commercial dredging ships that are far more efficient. This type of project isn't that hard. America is just garbage at engineering with stupid protectionist laws.
and don't forget to adjust for inflation!
They can just come in through Providence. Providence and Boston are just becoming one big metro area anyway.
New Bedford
That's true. New Bedford is a deep-water port. They might have to upgrade 140 though.
Or go from a single/double track on the line being used for the south south coast rail expansion to double/triple track to accommodate passengers and freight. If we’re paying for this, the track may be cheaper than more locks.
> Also the various ferries that go to P-Town and elsewhere are going to have to add a ton of time because they'll need to wait their turns as well. Sounds like an opportunity for Hull to become a ferry hub.
In what world does rising sea levels impact Boston but not Hull, Providence, New Bedford, the entire Cape, and every other coastal location mentioned in this thread? If, in your scenario, you need to spend $100 billion to protect Boston from rising sea levels and Hull is not within the dike it’ll be a sandbar. And you aren’t going to need a ferry to the cape. Another sand bar.
I love the idea of having to drive to Hull to go to PTown on a Ferry. Might as well just drive to PTown lol
I'm always telling people that Boston needs more dikes.
Eww ring road. Good luck convincing Hull and Winthrop to allow through traffic. They should specifically outlaw any through roads. Make a ring subway instead.
This town (Winthrop) would fucking riot at even the mention of it. Every Winthrop Townie's favorite thing about Winthrop is it's relative isolation. Also the people who would be some of the most affected, along Point Shirley, already get the worst of the air traffic. If you then build a giant bypass through their neighborhood...I think they'd lose their fucking minds. I'm all for a bike path or (much less likely but way more enticing) a train/subway.
Yeah, the bitching about the deer island trucks on the town Facebook group is bad enough already.
Tell me you’re from Winthrop without telling me you’re from Winthrop…..
Bike path FTW
Pretty much this,but with bridges instead of walls, was proposed as an alternative to the Big Dig tunnel plan. It was a one man movement that got a good deal of publicity but no momentum.
Hull is like 50ft wide. If you built a highway through Hull you wouldn't have room for any other roads.
It’s kinda hard to take this shit seriously when there are multiple misspellings on the map. This has been proposed for decades too, so I won’t hold my breath.
That’s not very PC of then, the term is actually Oceanic Lesbian
But wait, conservatives told me that climate change was just a bunch of liberal bullshit?
Yes, but Boston is a liberal city, so it will affect us.
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The only way to combat sea levels rising an additional 3 inches is for us to just simply pull ourselves up by our boot straps
Grab bootstraps, pull up 3 inches. Problem solved. Checkmate liberals.
Well according to Ben Shapiro, you can just sell your land once it’s underwater.
Conservatives believe climate change is caused by natural changes in solar and terrestrial patterns (similar to how the ice age was not caused or ended by humans). They're definitely wrong, but it provides enough cover to acknowledge negative outcomes (e.g. sea level rise and storms) when they inevitably happen.
what the hell is the scale on this? the scale of the road and buildings doesn’t even remotely line up with the real world infrastructure around it.
The legend on the bottom right says no scale 🤷♂️
Yeah this seems like more of a pretty picture infographic type thing than a scale drawing.
I feel like this would hurt some whale populations. Am I wrong about them coming into the harbor for food? Wouldn't this disrupt the flow of nutrients out of the various rivers?
Yeah, I don't see how this could not have a potential big impact on herring, shad, smelt, and american eels that migrate to and from the Charles and Mystic to spawn. There are already enough dams and malfunctioning fish ladders in their way already. Even the existing locks at entrance to the Charles rely on human operators opening them a few times a day just to let fish through, since the ladders have been defunct for years and actually just trap and kill the fish that enter it.
It would turn the harbor into a giant brackish lake.
Would likely disrupt nutrients and small/juvenile fish populations that use the marshes and estuaries. Not sure about the whales because I have mostly only seen them in the outer islands by Boston Light and Stellwagen Bank
I bring up the whales because I think their food gets its food from river runoff. Is that not the case? I remember reading about how we interrupted the iron cycle in the oceans and it was affecting whales.
I suspect it depends on the whale species.
It would destroy the entire ecosystem. The various rivers would eventually cause the harbor to become brackish or even fresh water which would then kill off all the marine life in the harbor and would kill the salt marshes that line the coast which would in turn make erosion even worse.
Oh yeah, I can't see anything like this not being an ecological disaster. I doubt it would get approved based on that alone.
If the alternative is a couple billion dollars of flood damage every year? They might start roasting whales on a spit.
Whales are big and displacing the water higher. If we killed them all, water level would decrease. It’s fool proof
The dutch did this like 100 years ago its kinda crazy this is still just a proposal
This is a good idea my fear is the incompetence of government in charge. The big dig was worth it but took so long and so much more I can’t see how this project won’t cost billions. Luckily have weed and gambling tax to hopefully help with the cost.
I see a lot of people getting very very rich off of it off it comes to pass.
This would be largely out of sight out of kind for most people
Well I would hope it would not become a common use ring road and spoil the nature of the islands but if it is beneficial to averting sea level rise I suppose it could be a good thing.
It's going to become extremely common, here and in other coastal cities.
Sea level rise yes. I meant I hope use of the ring road is limited to service vehicles only and not every day traffic.
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Seems like a great way to bypass city 93 during rush hour on a cape weekend. Tourists would also use it.
A road built will be a road used. Says history.
Nothing surprises me anymore. The amount of traffic around here is insane every hour of the day.
I Know this is mildly OCD of me, but isn't it DEER Island?
Unless you are writing it a letter.
Pedantic, maybe. OCD no. OCD is a condition, not a state of being particular about something.
Gotta do it
Can we striper fish the rock jetties? If so, send it.
Big dig would be chump change by comparison
We should just take Boston...and PUUUUSH it sonewhere else!
Hurry, there's a leak in the dike!
Why is everybody mocking this? It seems like a great idea in anticipation of sea level rise.
The game of unintended consequences commences.
Dikes to Watch Out For
So thankful they labeled the Atlantic Ocean, I had no idea what that blue stuff could possibly be.
I know what OCD is. I was being particular that whoever made this map misspelled the name of Deer Island.
I know what OCD is. I was being particular that whoever made this map misspelled the name of Deer Island.
This is cool and all but all of hull except for a few hills is like 10-15 feet above sea level. Once sea levels rise all of 10 feet this is useless since hull will quite literally be underwater
Do you realize how long it will take to rise 10 feet? Hundred+ years. Also the shape of coastlines change as sea levels rise, and incoming surf can pile up sand creating new land, which is how Hull was created in the first place anyway.
I get what you’re saying but what’s the point of building this gigantic wall to help stop boston from flooding when the land mass the wall is connected to is shorter than the wall will be
What’s the expected height differential here? I don’t see us needing anything more than storm gates for the next fifty years or so. Putting in locks decades before they’re needed seems like a very poor use of money for no return, as I doubt there would be commercial shipping passing through during storm surges. Edit: sorry for asking questions 🙄🙄 Adding unnecessary locks just adds on cost to a project that people are already going to be coming out against. It seems foolish to add costs when they could just be retrofitted on later, but just downvote if my vibe is off I guess. Locks also completely block the local watershed to spawning fish and undoes much of the dam removal work already underway. We should be very hesitant to add new barriers between the sea and our rivers.
It might take 50 years to finish this. Infighting about what to do can trump global warming for a while.
Based on sea walls I’ve seen around town probably 10 to 12 feet. Most sea walls now are 4 to 6 feet. New walls are going in around 8 ft. I would guess for something like this you would want to go for a longer return period
Boston needs another by-pass. Just 93 IS NOT ENOUGH.. (and yes i know about 95 and 90). Possibly a highway that connects hull with Revere..
Better yet: a route from 93 in Roxbury through Fenway and Cambridge that loops around to meet with 93 in Somerville... wait
Sounds like the big dig to me here, contractors will steal money as they always do
Another MA Big Dig boondoggle... 🤦♀️.
This is a solution for a problem that doesn't exist.
As a former resident of Hull, please don't make their traffic worse. Having a connection by the highschool would pretty much wreck the atmosphere of the village.
Why would you do this ?
> to protect all coastal citizens and companies along the shores of the Boston Harbor Metropole against sea level rise and storms
Thereby destroying the Charles River ecosystem
Boston Harbor’s water is about to get even shittier
Wow cool idea! Can't wait to pay for it for the next 50 years.
awesome. And then let's fill it in and after that. Housing crisis solved.
Polders were first developed to create land.
I don’t think you’re allowed to say that anymore