Make Walnut an Open Street

The Hamster Cage Should Come with a Wheel to Run On

Walnut at 13th.

Mayor Kenney recently said we may be staying at home until Labor Day. I've given this some thought, and I think he's probably right. The coronavirus is highly contagious, and people can carry it without having any symptoms. This is a really bad combination.

I personally think we won't be out of the woods until we have a vaccine. However, if we work really hard at developing and deploying tests for the virus and for its antibodies, and if we develop public health surveillance systems that are highly effective, I think we can start to open up a bit before the vaccine arrives - always, however, being on our guard.

I don't know about you, but I'm already tired of staying home. My wife and I have been at home for more than a month, and Labor Day would put us at 26 weeks, or six months.

I really look forward to our daily walks, and I think we need to recognize that our current regime is not nearly as restrictive as those in, for instance, France and Italy. For an idea of what things are like in a poor suburb of Paris, read this article.

If we're going to do this through the summer, I think we absolutely need to be able to get outdoors, and do it safely. I think we need more space, and I think we need better managed space.

I've been saying for a while that we need a lot more space, but I haven't said how much more space. Here you go.

The Hoop Skirt Theory
Social distancing currently requires maintaining six feet between yourself and other people you don't live with. This is up from three feet in the earlier days. And in normal times I think we can say your personal space on one of Philadelphia's small sidewalks is more like two feet. Frequently intruded upon.

Six feet might not sound like such a huge jump - only twice the earlier guidance, maybe three times your normal two feet. But let's have a look at the total area you're taking up. In your mind, draw a circle around yourself two feet from the center of your body - say somewhere around your esophagus.

Now calculate the area of the circle. I went back and dredged up some grammar school geometry. The area of a circle is pi (3.14) times the square of the radius (4). This comes to about 12.5 square feet.

What happens when the radius is 6 feet? It's about 113 square feet, or roughly ten times what you're used to. So we can jump ahead and say, as a general proposition, that we need about ten times more space than we've been accustomed to. This need is greatest in the places with small streets and small sidewalks, where there wasn't any wasted space to start with.

The sidewalk in front of my house is 11 feet 8 inches wide. The stoop is 28 inches deep. So continuous clearance is 9 feet 4 inches.

Imagine putting on a hoop skirt 12 feet in diameter and walking down my sidewalk. People are actually talking about hoop skirt social distancing online.

It might be fun for some computer whizz to develop a model of what social distancing actually looks like on our sidewalks. Since the six-foot circle is imaginary, two circles can overlap - you only need six feet of distance between people, unlike two people wearing our hoop skirts, who really would need twelve feet. And many of us are actually moving, often rather erratically as we stop to read our phones or look into the window of a closed store. I don't think a model of motor-vehicle traffic would do us justice.

Oakland and Friends
Other cities seem to have figured out that our current regime is not providing enough space. We, however, continue to shovel people onto the Schuylkill Banks and expect them to socially distance when there simply isn't enough space. Maybe give them a bigger pipe, or a second pipe. I've written about repurposing the outer lanes of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to provide another route to Kelly Drive and Martin Luther King Drive. I wouldn't move to enforcement until I'd provided adequate space.

As I said, other people seem to have figured out that social distancing requires a lot more space than is currently available, and they're moving to fix that. Oakland is repurposing 74 miles of city streets, allowing local motor-vehicle traffic only and creating shared public spaces where drivers must recognize the right of pedestrians and bicyclists to be in the street.

Oakland is in a class by itself, but other cities are also making significant moves. (For a story in the Guardian, click here. For a story in the Times, click here.)

And in Philly we're trying. The Bicycle Coalition and the Clean Air Council have sent a letter to the mayor, urging expansion of space for pedestrians and cyclists. Five members of City Council, including Council's president, co-signed the letter. And several community groups, including the Center City Residents' Association and the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, have also sent letters to the mayor. (For a story in the Inquirer, click here.)

Walnut Street
Recently Inga Saffron of the Inquirer suggested adding Walnut Street to the list of streets that should be repurposed. I'm quite fond of this idea. As Inga reports, part of the 1300 block of Walnut has already been repurposed (see photos at the beginning and end of this story). The street space between 13th and Juniper is being used as part of a quarantine site that has been established at the Holiday Inn Express located on the north side of the block.

As Inga puts it, "Since buses and other traffic have to be diverted anyway, why not block off the rest of Walnut Street in Center City? It’s not like businesses are open. Turning Walnut into a place for joggers and cyclists could make central Philadelphia feel less desolate than it does now."

Will this happen? I have no idea.

Walnut at Juniper.

See also Relieving Pressure on the Schuylkill Banks.

Relieving Pressure on the Schuylkill Banks

Six Feet of Separation Requires New Thinking

They're actually hopping up on one foot.

As the coronavirus continues, and we spend more and more time cooped up indoors, the value of spending a little bit of time outdoors continues to increase. However, we need to be able to do this safely, and right now we don't have enough space to maintain the magic six feet between individuals. The obvious answer is to repurpose underused street space away from motor vehicles and give it to the non-motorized residents.

I'm hoping we can get car-free streets throughout the city, but my particular concern right now is freeing up space that can relieve pressure on the Schuylkill Banks.

This morning I walked up the Benjamin Franklin Parkway from Logan Square to the Art Museum, and then I walked back home on the Schuylkill Banks.

I am frankly surprised that the City hasn't closed the outer lanes on the Parkway yet. These lanes are aimed directly at both Martin Luther King Drive and Kelly Drive. Normally they're dominated by cars. Freed up for non-motorized traffic, I think you would see them drawing substantial numbers of pedestrians and cyclists. The existing bike lane on 22nd Street makes the Parkway route to the park drives particularly attractive for cyclists.

This morning's motor vehicle traffic on the Parkway was light and would easily be handled by the inner lanes. I simply don't see any reason not to turn this space over to pedestrians and bicyclists.

On the Schuylkill Banks, traffic was very light this morning, but it was still difficult to maintain six feet of clearance, particularly at the bridges, some of which create serious neckdowns, and also on the hill by the skateboard park. There were a few people walking, like me, but most of the traffic was runners - many runners, mostly solo - with fewer cyclists and a smattering of grownups pushing children in strollers..

The thought occurred to me, as I walked, that the current situation is not sustainable. Traffic on the Banks will only increase as the weather gets warmer, and if nothing is done to redirect some of that traffic, I greatly fear that health concerns will lead the City to close down the Schuylkill Banks. This would be, I think, a very unpopular move.

I'm hoping that we can, instead, open the outer lanes on the Parkway to non-motorized traffic. I don't know that this move will solve the whole problem, but it will definitely make a dent in it and perhaps lead us to other useful measures that we may not be seeing clearly right now.

On a personal note, I trained for ten marathons largely on the Schuylkill Banks, the two park drives, and the Belmont Plateau. As I watched the runners on my walk today, I knew how much this time in this space meant to them. If we can manage to hold on to that, we will have done something special.

Needs a sawhorse or two.

See also My Life in Fairmount Park.

My Life in Fairmount Park

Stas in the Vltava River. Prague, 2013.

I've run ten marathons. Paris twice, New York three times. I trained by running in Fairmount Park. I would run out Kelly Drive to the angels or the Kelly statue and back to my house on Lombard Street. Or I would run the loop out Kelly, across the Falls bridge and back on MLK Drive. That was the counter-clockwise route. Sometimes I would run clockwise. Sometimes I would do two loops. And sometimes I'd run out MLK Drive to the water pumping station on Montgomery Drive, and then over to the Belmont Plateau for some hill work. Nice view from the top, if you still had binocular vision.

A significant component of my training was on a bicycle. When I was too tired to run, I would bike. I have happy memories of MLK Drive, and the lights under the Strawberry Mansion bridge, before dawn on a February morning. There was nobody else there. I felt safe, and I was happy, even though parts of me were quite cold.

The only part I didn't like was the crossing of the bridge at the beginning of MLK Drive. It was acceptable when I was running, but when I was biking I always knew fear.

I started writing about biking in Philadelphia in 2012. I wrote about the MLK bridge. I approached various people. I spoke with my City Councilman's chief of staff. I have subsequently spoken with many powerful people.

The MLK bridge looks just as it did in 2012. Five years have passed, and many wonderful things have happened in my life, including the birth of my first grandchild. But nothing has happened on the MLK bridge.

That's not my fault. I've done my bit. The failure lies with our city fathers and mothers.

Vaclav Havel. Prague, 2013.

"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." - Vaclav Havel

See also Uncorking the Bottleneck and The Bottleneck on MLK Is Still There.

Commuting by Boat

How about a water taxi between the Walnut Street dock and the Navy Yard? 

The esplanade by the Fairmount Water Works.

About ten years ago I was stuck at a hotel near the airport in Boston. The business conference I was attending was okay, but the evenings were starting to look like room service. Then one of my colleagues discovered the water taxis of Boston harbor. There was actually a dock right by our hotel (which did have a terrace on the water and a lovely view of downtown). We hopped in the boat and after a very pleasant nautical jaunt that was almost too brief, we landed at a dock and walked out to Faneuil Hall.

By the way, when was the last time you thought your commute was too brief?

I hadn't thought about this experience in years, and then a friend suggested I should do some reporting about ways to get more people onto the watery parts of the Schuylkill River (attracting people to the Schuylkill Banks doesn't seem to be a problem). And maybe write a story.

So I started talking to people. Bartram's Garden is doing some amazing stuff. Maitreyi Roy, the garden's executive director, introduced me to the Bartram's version of an ice cream float. In the good weather, the garden has kayaking and rowboating events for the local community every week. The season's pinnacle is the annual River Fest, when, among other things, the garden places a float out in the water. On the float is an ice cream stand. Row out to the float and get free ice cream. Or be a landlubber and buy a cone from the other stand, the one that's firmly anchored on dry land.

Fishing is also so popular at Bartram's Garden that Roy says they're looking into building more fishing docks.

In addition, there's the tour boat that has regular excursions from the Walnut Street dock down to Bartram's Garden. There's a lengthy layover so passengers can tour the garden, and then ride back to Walnut Street. Steve Narbus of Patriot Harbor Lines is very pleased with the Bartram's run, and he's also fond of the Walnut to Walnut ride, which takes people on a scenic tour from Walnut Street on the Schuylkill to Walnut Street at Penn's Landing, on the Delaware.

Walnut Street also has regular kayaking in the warm weather.

The Esplanade
An idea that's been kicking around for a while now focuses on the beautiful esplanade near the Fairmount Water Works, up by the Art Museum. A lot of people don't even know the esplanade is there. The idea is to place a dock, similar to the one at Walnut Street, next to this esplanade, and provide some kind of boat service between the Water Works and points downstream.

John Randolph, who heads the Schuylkill River Park Alliance, a community group that supports improvements to the river, has been toying with this idea for years - and he has not been alone. It seems like a natural. I asked John about access for the disabled - the stairs down from the Schuylkill Trail are impressive - and he told me that there was an elevator in the Water Works building, and a door from the building out onto the esplanade. How can this not work?

Next I spoke to Joe Syrnick, who heads the Schuylkill River Development Corporation, aka the Schuylkill Banks.  Joe and his organization are the people who manage the Schuylkill Banks, dealing with everything from graffiti to movies to the Walnut Street dock and the boat tours to Bartram's Garden.

During my conversation with Syrnick I occasionally felt like I was talking with the Robert Shaw character in Jaws. The Schuylkill generally looks placid, but all rivers are wild. Syrnick has a good stock of stories about what the Schuylkill can do when it's feeling frisky.

Some of the problems with the dock idea are straightforward. If you go to the esplanade and look down into the water, and the water is clear, you'll notice some really big rocks. Attaching a dock to this esplanade is not going to be a simple or inexpensive endeavor.

But that's just the beginning. There are questions about what construction of the dock would do to fish habitat along this part of the river. Also, there is the dam that sits just below Boathouse Row and next to the Water Works. Life downstream from a dam can get interesting. Just ask the fish who occasionally decide to go surfing over the dam.

Joe went through a number of these issues and then sent me on to Stephanie Craighead, who looks after these matters for the Parks Department. She told me Parks had conducted a very thorough investigation and come up with a price tag of $2 million for the dock, and also a list of unresolved issues. Parks decided not to proceed with the dock.

And then there's the question of who will use the dock. If a tour organizer put together a day that started with the Art Museum and then took customers down to Bartram's Garden, and maybe returned them to their hotels via the Walnut Street dock, then maybe this would make sense. Otherwise it's a large expenditure to build an underutilized asset.

Craighead told me that the Water Department had recently come up with the concept of a Learning Barge. The original idea was to moor the barge at the esplanade - the department's education program is housed at the Water Works - but after investigating, PWD is looking for other sites.

I still nurse the dream. The esplanade is a gorgeous place that most people never see. It would be nice to activate it. But you should never underestimate the power of water. Leonardo da Vinci certainly never did. He was fascinated by water, and having watched the Arno river flood on several occasions, the engineer in the artist spent a good bit of time looking at ways to control something that is inherently unruly.

There are a lot of reasons to want to put a dock at the Water Works. But we need to answer all the questions first.

The Learning Barge
Craighead then sent me on to Joanne Dahme at the Water Department to learn more about the Learning Barge. Dahme emphasized that the project is still at a very early, conceptual stage. The inspiration is a Science Barge located on the Hudson at Yonkers, N.Y. (There is a newer Science Barge in Miami, and a Learning Barge in Norfolk, Va.) All of these are environmental education centers that emphasize sustainability. The one in Yonkers seems to be mainly a vegetable garden. I'd thought they might be propagating oysters. It will be interesting to see what the Water Department comes up with.

Water Taxis
Beyond recreation and education, are there any other appropriate uses for the waters of the Schuylkill? Well, for a number of years I've been paying attention to the world of bicycling in Philadelphia. Not so long ago, this was a world that was almost entirely recreational. But recently there has been a large increase in the number of people who are using their bicycles to get to and from work, to drop the kids off at school, to go grocery shopping - you name it. Okay, I will: utility bicycling.

My experience with water taxis in Boston definitely sensitized me to the potential, but I hadn't really grasped how hot water taxis and commuter ferries have become in other cities recently. New York City in particular has inaugurated a new ferry service on the East River that ties together Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. San Francisco is expanding its existing public ferry system and also adding private water taxis to relieve the strain on land-based transportation. And Paris is looking at a new type of water taxi that makes no noise and no waves. It's called a Sea Bubble by its inventor.

So who wants to use the Schuylkill to commute?

I'm so glad you asked. How about the Navy Yard? It's not easy to get to, except by car, and the Schuylkill Expressway is never an idyllic experience. Are there people who live near the Walnut Street dock and work in the Navy Yard? Would they be interested in commuting by boat?

The answers are I don't know and I don't know. A good first step would be finding out.

I can say, though, that people seem to like the idea when I mention it to them. I had a very nice chat with Jennifer Tran, marketing director for the Navy Yard. She pointed out that, back when the Navy Yard was still repairing aircraft carriers, there was a ferry that ran between New Jersey and the yard, giving workers an attractive commuting option.

An Empty Niche
So what would a business plan look like for a water taxi service between the Walnut Street dock and the Navy Yard?

First, I think it should be a premium service. Mayor de Blasio in New York City is holding the price of the new East River ferry service down to the price of a subway ride. And the service is swamped. This tells me two things. First, there is substantial latent demand for water transport and, second, planners tend to underestimate that demand. At least in New York City. On the East River.

The way out of the swamp that New York finds itself in is to establish a premium service that will be viable with a relatively small passenger base. Then, in the short term, you can adjust the price to keep demand in balance with the number of seats available. And in the longer term you can add more boats, or bigger boats.

And, since this is the 21st century, I would sell reserved seats online. If you have a ticket, you should be able to get a seat on the boat. That's what Amtrak does now (it took a while). The analogy should not be the subway or Jersey Transit. The pictures and stories from the East River are not pretty.

Finally, recognize that you're serving a relatively limited geographical area. There's no substantial parking available near the Walnut Street dock. You could walk to the boat if you live close enough. And now that there's an Indego bike stand at 25th and Locust - about a block from the Walnut Street dock - you have an easy way to bike to the boat. That probably gets you up into Fairmount, out to West Philly, and east of Broad.

But it's still a niche product. Keep it small, know success, and be happy.

Philadelphia Navy Yard at South Broad Street.

The Bottleneck on MLK Is Still There

The sidewalk, MLK Bridge. Indego bike # 02662.

On May 21, 2009, there was a crash at the point where the Schuylkill Banks connects with the beginning of the Martin Luther King Drive. A motorist swerved around a stopped car and smacked into a father and a child who were crossing MLK Drive in the crosswalk. Father and child were seriously injured. A news report said that the motorist was very upset.

A Geography Lesson
Time for a brief geography lesson. My daughter hasn't lived in Philly for a while, and she was completely lost when I started to explain the MLK saga to her. So here you go.

The area we're talking about runs along the Schuylkill River by the Art Museum. The Schuylkill Banks is a riverside park and trail that now starts down by the South Street Bridge. It is essentially a firehose that collects torrents of walkers, runners, bicyclists, skateboarders - you name it - from Center City and University City and then vomits them into Fairmount Park, upstream from the Art Museum.

When you get to the top of the hill at the northern end of the Schuylkill Banks, near the Thomas Paine skateboard park, you have a choice. You can go up the east bank of the Schuylkill, on the trail by Kelly Drive, past Boathouse Row. Or you can go up the west side of the river on the trail by Martin Luther King Drive.

People mostly go up the trail by Kelly Drive. That's because the trail connection is easy and direct. To go up the trail by Martin Luther King Drive involves crossing MLK Drive on the infamous crosswalk and then crossing the Schuylkill River on something many people call the MLK Bridge.

MLK Bridge is a bottleneck for pedestrians and bicyclists. It is Valhalla for motorists. There is one lane for motorists headed upstream, and there are two lanes headed downstream. Why the imbalance? Nobody seems to know. But powerful forces are clearly committed to keeping both of those downstream lanes.

Meanwhile, pedestrians and cyclists share one sidewalk on the bridge. It is 58 inches wide, and the traffic is two-way. Cyclists in particular tend to spill over into the narrow shoulder of the cartway, which is dominated by storm drains with deteriorated grates placed well below the level of the pavement.

If you're in a car, crossing the bridge is a dream, and many motorists do it at truly dreamy speeds, thereby adding to the terror of the people who are out there for a little recreation - or, increasingly, trying to use this route to commute to work by bicycle.

It's not surprising that most non-motorists choose the Kelly Drive side, which as a result is frequently overcrowded.

The pity is what just about everybody is missing. I think that MLK Drive is possibly the most magical place in all of Philadelphia. But the bikers and walkers and runners are pretty much not there. And the motorists are going too fast to notice anything.

The crosswalk.

Back to the Crosswalk
The mayhem on the crosswalk, just before the MLK Bridge, did have one positive outcome. The City installed traffic lights. You can push a button, and the cars actually stop. (I still wait until they have stopped completely before I enter the crosswalk.)

Otherwise, nothing much has changed in the intervening eight years. It's not for lack of trying, though.

In 2012, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission issued a report entitled Improving Safety for All Users of Martin Luther King Drive. Among its recommendations: Eliminate one of the two inbound motor-vehicle lanes on the MLK Bridge, and use the space to build a two-way, shared-use path for pedestrians and bicyclists (pp. 1, 7-10, 34-35).

Nothing much happened.

In 2014, Fairmount Park got a new master plan, courtesy of Philadelphia Parks and Recreation, the William Penn Foundation, and several other organizations. The plan recommended a two-way cycle track across the MLK Bridge.

PDF spread 19, under River trail: "Fully rebuild the MLK Drive trail with an alignment closer to the river and a two-way cycle track along the bridge from Schuylkill Banks."

PDF spread 26: "Encourage the Streets Department to paint a demonstration bike lane along the MLK Bridge, before the deck is rebuilt, to ensure safe bicycle access."

So there you have actually two proposals: a new, permanent cycle track when the deck of the bridge is rebuilt, and also a temporary, quick-build path to improve conditions while we wait for the major construction.

And nothing much happened.

Matryoshka Dolls
Recently I was chatting with a young man who had just started an exciting job as a transportation planner in New Jersey. I asked him how things were going; he said he was beginning to figure things out. And then I found myself flashing back to my days as a junior city planner in 2 Lafayette Street, working for the New York City Planning Commission while the City was basically going bankrupt. I told him I didn't think he'd ever really know what was going on. He seemed a bit shocked, so I talked about the Russian Matryoshka dolls - every time you open one up, there's another one inside. I told him it was okay - just open enough dolls so you feel comfortable, and then use common sense. He seemed to like that story.

Will we ever see a quick-build cycle track on the MLK Bridge? I doubt it. Will the bridge be redecked? Yes, sometime. Will the new bridge have a cycle track? I don't know.

It's Chinatown, Jake.

Storm drain, MLK Bridge. All photos 1/6/17.

See also Uncorking the Bottleneck.

Uncorking the Bottleneck

Earlier this year, back in the spring, I was finishing up a loop on my bike.  For those of you who are not from Philadelphia, the loop is a lovely path and roadway in Fairmount Park that extends upstream on the west side of the Schuylkill River (this side is called Martin Luther King Drive) and down the east side of the river (Kelly Drive, after an ancestor of Grace Kelly).  There's an upstream bridge connecting the two sides, called the Falls Bridge (there are no falls, but that's another story).  The downstream link is anchored by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a truly amazing array of asphalt spaghetti, which goes by the collective name of Eakins Oval.

The loop itself is often characterized as 8.2 miles, although, this being Philadelphia, you can get an argument on that.  You can get an argument on anything in Philadelphia.  The round-trip from my house, which occasionally involves cordial exchanges of invective with taxi drivers, is about 12 miles.

Anyway, as I said, it was spring, the time of new things; a lovely day, the trees were freshly green, and I wasn't overly tired - and I was coming downstream on Kelly Drive through an area just short of the Art Museum called Boathouse Row.

The Denizens

I think at this point I should talk about the extraordinary mix of traffic that coexists on the loop, and generally gets along pretty well, even cheerfully.  There are bicyclists, runners, in-line skaters (I think fewer of these in recent years), a smattering of skateboarders (they're generally looking for hills), people on scooters, pedestrians, and pedestrians with dogs.  The pedestrians with dogs on extendable leashes deserve a category of their own.  I remember standing, my cleats firmly planted on the earth, and saying to a dog owner, "I'm trying, ma'am.  Really I am."  At any rate I managed not to kill her dog or myself.

Boathouse Row is the home, not surprisingly, of the boaters.  They're quite beautiful out on the river, rowing their boats up and down.  These are the long, skinny boats that take as many as eight rowers and someone called a coxswain, who steers and screams at the rowers. 

Occasionally the rowers need to load their boats onto trailers parked on Kelly Drive.  This involves carrying them out of the boathouse and across the path, which is about fourteen feet wide at this point.  The rowers are quite certain that they have the right of way, and because there are a lot of them, and they're young and strong, I always agree.

Boathouse Row is a bottleneck.  You never know quite what's going to cork it, but you should always be prepared to stop on short notice.  I had processed all this, and was at peace with it.

A New Arrival

Then, there it was.  I think we may have been by the Vesper boathouse (many of the boathouses have wonderful names).  My first thought was of the surrey with the fringe on top, from the Broadway show Oklahoma.  But there were no horses.  It was a large, four-wheeled vehicle that seemed to be propelled by the people in the front seat.  Pedaling.  Just like me.  Only it was forty inches wide (I later measured one), and with children on board.  I uncleated from my pedals, braked, and put my feet on the ground.

There was no way to pass.  The oncoming traffic was a solid, and I thought rather grim, mass.  The surrey in front of me - they actually are called surreys - was having a conversation and had rolled to a stop.  I stood patiently.

Actually, I was panicking.  I've been running and riding the loop for more years than I care to remember, and I was seeing it come to an end.

Eventually, the surrey moved ahead, and I cleated in and floated along behind it.  As we got to Lloyd Hall, at the end of Boathouse Row, I saw that the bicycle rental shed had been moved and transformed.  These folks had dozens of surreys for rent.  My heart sank.

Then I took a breath.   The people riding these things were very happy.  Their kids were thrilled.  It was a whole new way to enjoy the loop, which in the past has frankly not been terribly child friendly.

The loop is for everyone, I told myself.  It should be for everyone.  So how do we do this so everyone enjoys it and nobody dies?

Where Do All These People Come From?

I went home and thought.  (First I took a shower.)  The traffic on the loop has increased dramatically since the opening of a trail, called the Schuylkill Banks, that runs downriver to Locust Street, at the end of Center City.  Think of the Schuylkill Banks as a firehose belching the people of Center City out onto Kelly Drive.

And the demographics of Center City have changed pretty dramatically.  There are a lot more young people, and many of them seem actually to enjoy breaking a sweat.  Stylishly, of course.

There are those who suggest that the increase in park traffic is a result of the recession:  Money's tight, the beach is out, so are the mountains - hey, let's check out the park.  Surely there's something to this, but I don't buy the implication that park visits will decline if the economy ever improves. 

Go and have a look at the people who are actually using the loop.  If you have been thinking that Kelly Drive is largely populated by what Emma Lazarus called the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, you will find yourself thinking again.  I'm inclined to believe that people riding $3,000 bikes can get to the beach if they want to.  Maybe in the south of France. 

(The Lazarus quote is on the base of the Statue of Liberty - odd how we used to welcome the "wretched refuse" of other countries and no longer seem inclined to do so.  Personally I think the loop would benefit from greater economic and ethnic diversity, but just now I'm trying to describe things as they are.)

Let's face it.  We Philadelphians have a huge success on our hands.  Now all we need to do is follow through.  That means, among other things, lightening the burden on Boathouse Row.

The Long Term

The obvious long-term solution is already on the drawing board, and parts of it have actually been built.

Let's go back to the Schuylkill Banks.  In fact, let's go to the base of Locust Street.  This is where all those Center City people enter the park.  They cross the CSX railroad tracks, and then they all turn right onto the path, which goes not just to Kelly Drive but all the way out to Valley Forge.  If you're feeling energetic.

Nobody turns left.  There's no place to go.  You can go upstream on the Schuylkill Banks from Locust Street, but you can't go downstream.

Actually, some people do turn left.  You can go a few feet before you run into a chain link fence.  And then you can gaze downriver, towards the South Street Bridge.  And you can dream.

You will not be alone.  The dream is for a path that will run downriver, past the South Street Bridge, jump to the other bank of the Schuylkill (using an existing bridge), head to Bartram's Garden (one of the city's most undervisited treasures because it's currently so hard to get to), and eventually end near the airport at Fort Mifflin, a historic site that dates back to the Revolution. 

One part, south of the South Street Bridge, was recently completed.  It's called the DuPont Crescent, and it's currently a nice neighborhood park waiting to be connected to the larger trail.  Another piece, a boardwalk over the river connecting the current trailhead at Locust Street with the South Street Bridge, is scheduled to start construction soon. 

I very much look forward to the day when I can ride a bicycle from Locust Street to Fort Mifflin.  But let's face it.  That day is years from now.  It'll be fabulous when it comes, but the Left-Hand Trail won't be uncorking Boathouse Row anytime soon.

Hunting for a Corkscrew

Let's go back to the loop, and see if there's a quick fix.  A cheap, quick fix.  Quick because the crowding is there now, and cheap because the city is currently broke.  Elegant solutions that cost a lot of money will not be built.

On the east bank of the Schuylkill, on Kelly Drive, there's no space.  The pathway is already doubled from the Connecting Railway Bridge upstream to just short of the Strawberry Mansion Bridge.  (For you art lovers, the Connecting Railway Bridge dominates the background of Thomas Eakins' famous 1871 painting Max Schmitt in a Single Scull.)

Upstream of Strawberry Mansion, the path wedges tightly between Kelly Drive and a retaining wall that keeps me from falling into the river.  And, of course, there is no more room on Boathouse Row.  None at all.

Okay, guess what?  There's space over on the west bank. Martin Luther King Drive is four miles of roadway that is, frankly, underutilized by automobiles.

The city has recognized this.  Quite a few years ago, the city closed MLK Drive to automotive traffic on the weekends - just during the day, and only from April to October. 

It's a wonderful thing.  I can hop on my bike in the morning, cruise up the Schuylkill Banks, and then enter a green park space filled with old trees and running next to a river.  For bikers and runners, I submit this is close to nirvana.  If you're not interested in nirvana, I can talk about elbow room.

There's a spirit to it - possibly what Emma Lazarus meant by breathing free.  And it's not just the usual suspects.  The Philadelphia Rowing Club for the Disabled launches squadrons of hand-cyclists from its boathouse near Black Road.  And whole families show up on their bikes - moms, dads, peewee tots in profusion.

Originally the Drive was closed to virtually all automotive traffic all day on Saturday and Sunday.  (My impression is that there were always exceptions, such as people going to the disabled rowers' club.)  Local residents objected, however, and now the full length is closed only until noon.  At that point the downstream portion opens from Sweetbriar down to the bridge over the Schuylkill (I'll be calling this the MLK bridge).

On weekend afternoons, the automotive traffic on the lower portion is extremely light, to the point of evanescence.  That's because the only upstream access point is Sweetbriar.  People who drive on MLK Drive generally go the whole length.  They want to get on at Falls Bridge and barrel down to Eakins Oval, or vice versa.

I suppose I could suggest making the lower portion of MLK Drive once again "closed for recreation" on weekend afternoons.  "Closed for recreation" is how the radio puts it.  The automobile traffic doesn't justify keeping it open for cars, and there's significant demand from "recreationists." 

But I'm not going to do it.  The fight the last time was too vitriolic.  I don't want to revisit that ugliness.

Capabilities

In eighteenth century England, there was a famous landscape architect called Capability Brown.  Actually his first name was Lancelot; he got his nickname because he liked to tell his potential clients that their estates had "capability."  I think Brown would have liked Martin Luther King Drive.

Let's take a closer look at this asphalt phenomenon.  Both the upstream and downstream sides of MLK Drive vary between one and two lanes.  (At its very end, the southbound part blimps out to three lanes for a few feet.)

The upstream part starts by the Art Museum as one lane and stays that way almost to Sweetbriar, by the zoo, where it sprouts a turning lane just before the light.  This second lane continues after the light.  I have no idea why, since one lane has been perfectly sufficient to this point.  Near the upstream end, the engineers finally admit that the second lane is unnecessary.  Three very large bridges cross MLK Drive and the Schuylkill River at that point, and the large piers for these bridges only allow space for one lane in each direction.  After these bridges, as the upstream roadway approaches the Falls Bridge, the second lane reappears, again as a turning lane.  The upstream side of MLK Drive is one lane for nearly a third of its length.

The downstream roadway is more capacious, but again there is only one lane going under the three bridges.  Again begging the question of whether the second lane is necessary.  Two lanes it is, though, all the way down to and across the MLK bridge.  As I mentioned, the final bit, leading into Eakins Oval in from of the Art Museum, actually expands to three lanes.  Why have grass when you can have asphalt?

There are intermediate access points on MLK Drive, most notably Montgomery and Sweetbriar, which actually have traffic lights.  And cars do get on and off.  But not a lot.  As I mentioned, most of the traffic shoots from one end to the other. 

MLK Drive is best analyzed as a straw.  What goes in one end comes out the other end.

Americans are raised on the concept of limitless possibilities, so let me throw a few bromides in the way.  A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.  The capacity of a straw is determined by its narrowest point.

And the narrowest point of MLK Drive is the section that passes under the three bridges at its upstream end.  One lane in each direction.  I can tell you right now that nobody is going to move those bridge piers.  So the capacity of this road, unless we have a nuclear war, is one lane in each direction.

A second lane is useful for turning - I get that - and also for passing , which of course leads to abrupt lane changes and speeding.  The speed limit on MLK Drive is 35 miles an hour. Let us examine our consciences here.  If we're serious about 35 mph, and the actual volume of cars has already been determined by the choke point, what do we need passing lanes for?

I suppose at this point I should argue for taking the excess paved space on MLK Drive and turning it into a bike lane.  But I'm not going to.  It's a perfectly good idea, easy to implement from a technical point of view, and perhaps one day it will happen.  I just don't feel like dealing with the Society of People Who Like to Drive Really Fast on MLK Drive.  Life is too short.

My Bright Idea

So here's my bright idea.  Kelly Drive, on the east side of the river, is crowded.  MLK Drive, on the west side of the river, is usually not crowded.  Why?

You can get an idea by standing on lower MLK Drive at noon on a Saturday or Sunday.  The Schuylkill Banks winds its way up a hill and presents recreationists with a choice.   Continue on to Boathouse Row and Kelly Drive, and never have to share the road with motorists.  Or go to MLK Drive, where the situation depends on the time.

At 11:59 a.m., you, your spouse, and your children can roll off the Schuylkill Banks and onto the three lanes of MLK Drive, with nary a car in sight.  And you can then ride for four miles, surrounded only by other recreationists.

That's 11:59 a.m.  Fast forward to 12 noon.  Here come the cars - not so many, as I mentioned, but enough to put fear in the heart of a mom.  I could mention an accident in May of 2009, but I won't.

So how do you get up to what's left of nirvana, the part of the drive upstream of Sweetbriar that's still devoted to recreation?

Here's how you do it.  You get on the single sidewalk that crosses MLK bridge.  It's on the upriver side, and it's 58 inches wide.  I know.  I measured it.  Two inches shy of five feet, and it's two-way.

Virtually all the recreational traffic in both directions gets pushed onto this sidewalk.  A few hardy bikers will go in the roadway, but the cars are going very rapidly and there's only one lane on the upstream side, next to the sidewalk, so it's not for the faint of heart.

Basically, this stretch over the bridge doesn't pass the cat's whiskers test.  Cats stick their whiskers into a mousehole to see whether their head can get through.  I think bicycle handlebars can do the same thing.  Only they don't bend.  The handlebars on my old bike are 24 inches wide.  Throw in an oncoming bike with 24-inch handlebars, and you've got 48 inches in a 58-inch space.  Plus runners and walkers.  There are no dogs on extendable leashes here, and I think you can see why.

Okay.  On the bridge there are three lanes of automotive traffic, one upstream and two downstream.  I've already suggested that the second downstream lane is unnecessary.  If it were necessary, you'd expect to see two lanes in the other direction as well.  People go to town to work, and then they actually do go home.  So, two in means two out.  Only here we have two in and one out.  I don't get it.

So let's get some white paint and make a bicycle lane.  It can be for runners and walkers and all the other recreational users as well - even the surreys and the dogs on extendable leashes. 

At the upstream end of the bridge, a good-hearted construction crew years ago left the curb quite low.  Bikes have no trouble crossing it as it is, and then you're on a decent path that takes you to the Falls Bridge.

All this requires is a few gallons of paint.  There's no construction involved.  And then there would be plenty of room for everyone - and not just on weekends.  This repainting would make MLK Drive highly accessible seven days a week. 

And guess what?  You just - pop! - uncorked Boathouse Row and Kelly Drive.  The people are flowing like champagne at a Main Line wedding.

And Finally

I've run ten marathons on two continents, and I've trained for all of them out on the loop.  I cannot tell you what a jewel this strip of parkland is.  I don't know of any city in the country that has anything better.  I've run the loop on the Charles River in Boston, and it's a lot of fun, but I prefer Philly.  In New York I've run Central Park, Prospect Park, and the Hudson River park.  They're all great, but they're not better than Philly.  We have a gem.  We should keep it sparkling.