BOSTON (AP) – After more than a decade of navigating an ever-shifting pattern of detours and dead ends, Boston drivers finally had something to cheer about Friday as Big Dig officials opened what they said is the project’s last major piece of roadway.

The opening of the Albany Street off-ramp from Interstate 93 south marks the moment when the $14.6 billion highway project’s road pattern is substantially finished, according to Turnpike Authority chairman Matt Amorello.

The opening of the ramp was marked by brief comments from Amorello. At about 2:30 p.m., the ramp was cleared of officials and reporters and the first cars and trucks rumbled onto the ramp in time for the afternoon commute. The new ramp allows cars to exit I-93 south for a shorter trip to the city’s South End and South Boston neighborhoods.

Amorello said the day marks an important milestone is a project that has been plagued over the years by soaring costs and lengthy delays. The cost of the project ballooned from $2.6 billion to $14.6 billion. In 2004, a wall panel sprung an eight-inch hole, flooding the northbound Interstate 93 tunnel and causing a 10-mile backup. That lead to the discovery of 169 wall panels in need of some repairs. Heavy construction work on the project began in 1991.

“We’re starting to see the success of this project,” he said. “There’s been an incredible engineering achievement.”

There is still work to be done on the project. Grouting to patch leaks in the tunnels should wrap up sometime around the end of the month. That will end the practice of overnight lane restrictions. There is still some electrical work to be finished in some of the tunnels.

There are also pending legal issues. Lawyers from Attorney General Tom Reilly’s office have been working to recover money from some of the contractors that worked on the Big Dig. That effort could lead the announcement of settlements or the filing of lawsuits early this year.

There is also work to be done on the 30-acre swath of open land created by the demolition of the old, elevated highway. Plans for the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, named after the mother of President Kennedy and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., include parks and museums.

That will also include some final construction of new surface streets.

All that work – the surface streets, parks and final clean-up – should be finished by the spring of 2007, Amorello said.

“It’s a great day for the men and women who built this project,” he said. “It’s a good day to celebrate all that hard work.”

So far, Amorello, the project has required 100 million man hours of construction.

But for drivers, the opening of the ramp – just one small piece in a project of mind-boggling complexity – signals that, for the first time in a very long time, the city of Boston should have a stable street pattern.

Formally called the Central Artery and Third Harbor Tunnel project, the Big Dig not only buried Interstate 93 in tunnels underneath downtown Boston, but also connected the Massachusetts Turnpike to Logan Airport with a third harbor tunnel.

—

On the Net:

Big Dig: http://www.massturnpike.com/bigdig/index.html

AP-ES-01-13-06 1754EST