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Repairs due to improve O’Neill tunnel reception

Starts & Stops

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February 12, 2012|By Eric Moskowitz

The Cambridge Arts Council has asked artists with regional ties to design… (Aaron Stephan )

Graham West drives five days a week - sometimes six - from Marshfield to Woburn and back, which means he spends a lot of time in the Tip O’Neill Tunnel, often with traffic at a crawl. Adding insult to delay, West laments, is that the radio reception he relies on to stay sane in the tunnel has grown increasingly worse.

“Is there anything that can be done to repair the radio reception in the Big Dig tunnel?’’ said West, who runs a commercial awning company. “It seems as though it’s getting worse by the week.’’

This was the first I’d heard of this, and it was different from the usual questions and criticisms that come over the transom about commuting problems and the state of the MBTA and the highway system. Come to think of it, I had noticed a lot of static lately on some of the stations I flip among - WBUR and WEEI, to name two - while driving in the north- and south-bound barrels of the Thomas P. “Tip’’ O’Neill Jr. Tunnel. But I had just assumed it had always been that way.

Turns out, West is right. Recent roadway-resurfacing work has damaged some sections of the AM antennas that run the length of the tunnel, diminishing the quality of reception, Department of Transportation spokesman Michael Verseckes said.

The 1 1/2-mile tunnel has a radio rebroadcast system built around eight electronic cabinets scattered throughout it that sample Boston AM and FM radio stations.

Those cabinets adjust the frequencies of the stations and rebroadcast them down the tunnel, using a network of antennas - one leg in the ceiling, one leg beneath the pavement - for the AM radio waves. FM is carried by twin-lead cable - the kind you used to see on the back of your old television, connecting it to the antenna - along the length of the tunnel wall.

Over the past two years, the state has been repairing the road in the tunnel as part of normal highway maintenance, milling down the old surface and paving it anew. On occasion, that has damaged the antennas buried in the roadway, Verseckes said. And for scientific reasons I didn’t quite follow, the imbalance created in the AM signal has also affected the FM, because they are rebroadcast in the tunnels together.

That’s only a minor inconvenience for people like me who travel the tunnels at odd hours, or who drive Interstate 93 through the city infrequently. But at peak rush hours, traffic can slow to a crawl.

Good news: The Department of Transportation intends to fix the problem in the spring, Verseckes said.