The Central Arterial is one of the last and largest projects to be carried out as part of the National Interstate Program. The major and most critical link in Boston's arterial system, the Central Artery-an old elevated highway, had fallen into disrepair and had to be replaced. It could be replaced, as is, a new arterial, at great disruption to city transportation and economics, or rebuilt as a new, higher capacity and more expensive tunnel facility. Choosing the latter was seen to be a win win solution for the region, putting in place an improved urban environment, a less disruptive construction process sand an improvement in traffic flow. To accomplish this significant project across many political regimes required a great deal of negotiation and a commitment to sustain a strong environmental transportation policy. One of the major players in the development of the Artery will address these complex issues.

Frederick Salvucci is a Civil Engineer specializing in transportation with particular interest in infrastructure, urban transportation, public transportation, and institutional development in decision making. Most of his career has been in the public sector, having served between 1975 and 1978, and again from 1983 to 1990, as Secretary of Transportation of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts under Governor Dukakis, and prior to that as transportation advisor to Boston Mayor Kevin White. In those roles he has participated in much of the transportation planning and policy formulation in the Boston urbanized area and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts over the past twenty years, with particular emphasis on the expansion of the transit system, the development of the financial and political support for the Central Artery/Tunnel Project, and the design of implementation strategies to comply with the Clean Air Act consistent with economic growth.

M r. Salvucci teaches courses in Urban Transportation Planning, Institutional and Policy Analysis, and Public Transportation. He attended MIT as both an undergraduate and graduate student of Civil Engineering, earning his Bachelor of Science in 1961 and his Master of Science in 1962. His international education includes a year at the University of Naples as a Fulbright Scholar from 1964 to 1965, studying the use of transportation investment to stimulate economic development in high poverty regions of Southern Italy.