This message comes from NPR sponsor Shopify, the global commerce platform that helps you sell and show up exactly the way you want to. Customize your online store to your style. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash NPR. Whether it's railways or highway construction, infrastructure projects in the U.S.

often means high price tags and lengthy timelines.

Perhaps no project captures this better than Boston's

Central Artery Tunnel Project,

more commonly known as the Big Dig.

It's the nation's most expensive highway project and it took more than two decades to plan and build.

We asked you about your memories of the highway's construction and here's what some of you told us.

Hi, this is Betty calling you from Sarasota. I lived in Boston when the big dig was happening

and everybody was concerned and it started out with like a two or three billion dollar thing and it was it just took forever it was huge

inconvenience to everybody and we felt it was going to be a disaster anyway

thank God it was finally done and that took forever too.

Hi, my name's Alicia and I live in Weston, but I lived in Cambridge during the big dig and

we never thought we'd see it end. We were very pleased, however, that the Mass Pike went all the way to the airport, saved

us a lot of time.

But the huge myths in the project was that they never connected North and South Station with a direct rail link. Big, big mistake.

Thanks for those messages. The Big Dig is also a new podcast from GBH News in Boston.

The nine-part podcast series explores the history of the highway and

what lessons it holds for future infrastructure projects. We'll listen to the first episode

of the podcast a little later. In the episode we learn how the project came to be. But first we sit down with host and producer of the podcast, Ian Koss, and get a behind-the-scenes look at the big dig. I'm Jen White. You're listening to the one a podcast where we get to the heart of the story. We'll be back with a conversation in just a moment. I'm glad you said that because nobody says that.

Can I just say thank you to you for such a thoughtful interview?

Oh my God, yeah, I think you nailed it.

Bullseye.

...