BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- As Wisconsin teacher Scott Wallace contemplated how to get into the city from Worcester for a harbor cruise, he had a couple of options: He could zip to the downtown pier using Big Dig roadways, or jump on a commuter train.
He chose the train.
After a woman was killed Monday night when 12 tons of concrete fell from a tunnel ceiling onto her car, tourists are reconsidering how to get around Boston at the height of the historic city's tourism season. For many travelers, fears of traffic congestion triggered by the closure loom as large as safety worries.
"It was for the convenience," Wallace, 45, said. "But even without considering that, for safety's sake I wouldn't want to have driven in."
Tourists and commuters alike are abandoning Big Dig routes for trains, ferries and even shuttle flights. The subway system has been running extra trains, and the Boston Red Sox urged fans to take public transportation to games at Fenway Park.
Tourists' doubts about transportation pose a challenge for Boston's tourism industry, which hopes to draw 17 million visitors this year.
The Big Dig highway project buried Interstate 93 through the downtown area, eliminating an old overhead highway, and extended the Massachusetts Turnpike to Logan International Airport via a new harbor tunnel. The section that was closed after the concrete collapse is a connector to the harbor tunnel.
The Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau on Thursday issued a news release advising visitors and tour planners about the indefinite closure of the tunnel segment where the accident occurred. The advisory noted safety inspections are under way throughout the Big Dig, and listed alternative routes.
"The biggest thing I have to fight next is the rumor mill, and people deciding on their own that the tunnels have all collapsed, and that it's impossible to get from hotels to the airport," said spokesman Larry Meehan.
The ceiling collapse triggered traffic tie-ups Tuesday morning that prompted organizers of a three-day Microsoft Corp. conference that drew more than 7,000 participants at the city's new convention center to delay the event's start by 45 minutes.
Meanwhile, transportation alternatives were seeing plenty of business. Cape Air, which operates commuter flights between Logan International Airport and Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, has been running double and in some cases triple its usual number of flights on most routes the past three days, spokeswoman Michelle Haynes said.
At Harbor Express, which runs high-speed ferries from Boston to Quincy and Hull on the South Shore, passenger traffic has doubled, with roughly four times as many phone inquiries as usual.
"It's unfortunate that an accident is a trigger for increased business," said Mike McGurl of Water Transportation Alternatives Inc., which runs Harbor Express. "People are using the opportunity to investigate other ways to get to downtown Boston."