Cutting Corners

Mark Twain and the Venetian Gondolier

South Street bridge. So what is the acceptable casualty rate here?

In 1867, Mark Twain took a trip to, among other places, Venice. Here's what he has to say about gondoliers cutting corners:

"I am afraid I study the gondolier's marvelous skill more than I do the sculptured palaces we glide among. He cuts a corner so closely, now and then, or misses another gondola by such an imperceptible hair-breadth that I feel myself 'scrooching,' as the children say, just as one does when a buggy wheel grazes his elbow." (This is in chapter 23 of Innocents Abroad.)

My original thought had been that the phrase originated at the dawn of the motor age, but upon further reflection I wouldn't be surprised if the term went back at least to Roman times. It's easy enough to imagine a man in a toga scolding a careless charioteer by yelling, "Don't cut corners!"

Of course the man in the toga would have said it in Latin. I wondered what that would sound like, so I asked Emily Marston and Ashley Opalka, my mentors in all things classical, and they guided me to this: "Noli angulos praecidere!"

Cars Cutting Corners
At any rate, cars didn't invent corner cutting, but they clearly made matters worse, and, not surprisingly, official efforts to control corner cutting date back to the beginning of the motor age.

I took this picture, and then I jumped to the left.

In 1903, a wealthy New Yorker named William Phelps Eno published "Rules for Driving," a four-page document. New York City adopted the "Rules," making it the country's first official traffic code. As a counter to corner-cutting, Eno adopted something called the outside left turn. Drivers were instructed to move straight into the intersection until they reached the center and then make a virtually 90 degree turn, with the center point of the intersection always to their left. So pretty much the opposite of cutting a corner.

Not too shabby. Maybe even four feet of clearance.

Eno also suggested that New York install a post at the center of the intersection, to mark the spot. The city did this in 1904 at numerous intersections.

The center post came to be called the "silent policeman," and it spread rapidly across the country, as did Eno's "Rules."

Note fragging on the little red bathmat at the crosswalk.

Neither the posts nor the "Rules" were received with unmixed enthusiasm, and it appears that something of a guerrilla war developed against the posts, with large numbers being destroyed. Traffic regulators moved on to traffic lights; the first practical traffic lights appeared in Cleveland in 1914. (For more on all this, see Peter D. Norton, Fighting Traffic, 2011, chapter 2.)

I think of the silent policeman as a taciturn and rather stiff fellow standing at the center of a roundabout - the basic idea was to get cars moving in a circular direction around a main point. But this small piece of infrastructure could hardly do the job on its own, and the typical intersection remained a classic crossroads, with two streets intersecting at more or less right angles, and everyone seeking the shortest way through, as they had done before cars. Traffic lights worked to segregate traffic headed in different directions, but they did nothing to discourage the shortest way through.

A truck kissing the curb.

The South Street Bridge
Which brings us to the present day and to a particular corner in Philadelphia, where motorists turn right from 27th Street to go up onto the South Street bridge.

First the good news. The existing bike lanes on South Street and 27th Street finally got flex posts earlier this year. Back in 2017, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia made a detailed proposal concerning the bike lanes in this area. Adding flex posts was a big part of the proposal, and while the Bike Coalition plan for the lanes was, in my opinion, superior to the final result, I think any posts at all must be seen as a major step forward.

Here's the fly in the ointment. The Bike Coalition called on the City to "Install a mountable corner island at the corner of 27th and South to slow down motor vehicles turning onto the South Street Bridge."

Good idea. In addition to slowing traffic, it would discourage corner cutting, which is rampant here.

Cars do it too. Note the cracks in the sidewalk.

What did we get? Nothing. There is no marked bike lane at the corner.

I simply don't understand this. If you don't want to do an island, how about a mountable curb? Here's a mountable curb in Brooklyn, at Fulton and Bedford, where turning traffic apparently has trouble staying in its lane.

Do a curved version of this. But do something.

Fulton at Bedford, Brooklyn.

Why Care?
So why is this important? Because this intersection is a test case for the City's Vision Zero and Complete Streets programs. Are cars and trucks and buses prepared to make space for bicyclists and pedestrians?

Bikes and peds aren't asking for the whole space, just part of it. And perhaps we can all agree that it would be better if buses did not drive on the sidewalk.

This intersection is a tight space, and the tradeoffs are hard. I think all of the solutions will wind up with motor vehicles going slower.

I think adding a curved mountable curb at the corner would do a lot of good. Currently there is no indication for motorists, telling them that the space next to the curb is a bike lane, and suggesting that they take a line around the corner that stays out of the bike lane. Call me an optimist, but I think that many of the people turning this corner will be willing to follow directions if they are offered.

Large motor vehicles, like buses and trucks, do have trouble here, and some of them will still mount the curb, and that will continue to be an unsafe condition. However, I do think the mountable curb would greatly increase safety here.

There are other things that could be done, such as removing the eastbound turn lane, or moving the stop bar for the eastbound traffic further back from the intersection. Both of these would provide more room for maneuver on the westbound side.

I can already hear people complaining about increased congestion for motor vehicles, and more backups on the bridge and on Lombard. But here's the thing. The way to cut congestion for motor vehicles is to dramatically increase the number of people walking, biking, and taking the bus.

For a century, we've been giving more and more space to cars, and we have never solved the basic problems of congestion and crashes. More space for cars will not ever solve these problems.

But will more people actually walk and bike and take the bus if we give them decent infrastructure? Yes. Let's just take the bicyclists.  When it comes to cycling, numerous surveys have put the population into four categories. My favorite is No Way, No How, usually about a third of the population. What we have biking on the South Street bridge today are the Strong and Fearless, and the Enthused and Confident, perhaps ten percent of the total. Half the population are Interested but Concerned.

What are the people in this last category concerned about? Getting hit by a car and suffering a life-altering injury. Give them a complete network of protected bike lanes, and we could quintuple the number of people bicycling in Philadelphia.

And that's how you solve congestion in the main traffic lanes.

We're not all strong and fearless.

See also Intermittently Terrifying, Put Traffic Lights on the Schuylkill Expressway, No Turn on Red, Running of the Bulls on Lombard Street, Is It a Curve or Is It a Turn?

Go to the Light

Simple Rules for a Postmodern City

Emerging from the deep at Dilworth Park.

One afternoon recently my wife and I took the train back from New York, and we found ourselves standing in the great hall at 30th Street Station, and neither one of us felt like standing in the cab line. So we walked across 30th Street and down the SEPTA rabbit hole. We'd been intending to take the trolley, but I managed to lead us down the stairs to the track for the Market-Frankford Line.

I have a habit of making wrong turns underground. I don't think I'm alone, but I've lived long enough to know that the occasional wrong turn can be an invitation to discovery. So we decided to take the MFL to 15th Street.

I'm glad we did. We got off at 15th Street right next to the stairs that go up and east to Dilworth Park. And there, still standing on the MFL platform, we looked up the stairs and saw the light. It was reaching down from Dilworth Park, and beckoning to us.

Here's a rule. When people are underground, show them where the light is. It makes them less anxious. And if you can cap it with a grand entrance into a truly fabulous public square, that would be nice.

The designers at Dilworth Park didn't invent the idea of orienting on light, and they didn't invent the grand entrance. But they pulled both ideas off, bigtime. I'm grateful.

One level of circulation? Or two? Or three?
Many Americans prefer to travel on ground level. Is this preference intrinsic to human nature, or is it simply the comfort of the familiar, which opens up the possibility that people can be lured underground with good design and decent maintenance?

I hadn't reviewed my thinking about multi-level circulation around City Hall in a while, so I took a few walks and snapped a few pics. Overall, I'd say I have more good news than bad news, and also I just have news - things I hadn't thought about before.

Claes Oldenburg, Clothespin, 1976.

Clothespin Forever!
Before the new entrances in Dilworth Park, I'm going to guess that everybody's favorite door to the underground was the one that wraps around Claes Oldenburg's clothespin. It's a wonderful piece of sculpture, and the space fits it like a glove. The space is basically a hexagonal pit with a staircase that hugs the perimeter; the bottom of the hexagon functions as a kind of traffic roundabout, sending pedestrians off on a variety of vectors. After the new guys across the street, the space at the foot of the clothespin feels a bit cramped, but I think I may just have to get over it.

Escalator to What?
The clothespin is west of 15th Street, just south of Market. To the north of Market, midway to JFK, lies another entrance that I find more problematic.

To its credit, this is an older example of daylighting the trip upstairs. And there is an escalator.

Yes, but why here?

But why is it here? The midblock location means most people will walk past convenient entrances at the corner of Market or JFK, and when you get downstairs you confront a T intersection. If you walk straight forward you walk into a pretzel shop. To the left and to the right there's quite a lot of transit. There's decent signage, but still it's a midblock location downstairs as well as upstairs. Don't get me wrong; it's functional. But it is a bit clunky.

Desire Lines
Over in Rittenhouse Square a few years back a new footpath was born. Originally it was a dirt path - quite muddy in the wet weather.

As Market Street West kept building new office buildings, the number of people walking from the PATCO train on Locust Street through Rittenhouse Square increased - and guess what? They cut the corner on 18th Street, walking over grass from an east gate to a north gate. I watched this happen on my own walks to and from work.

This is called a desire line. Eventually it was paved.

Do the escalators over on 15th lie on anyone's desire line? I don't think so.

Light Boxes
So why are the escalators there? I think I know. They're located in one of several light boxes (or light wells) that dot the neighborhood. These are big square holes in the ground, with glass walls that let light permeate sideways into the concourse (there are three levels of pedestrian circulation in this area: ground level, concourse, and train platform).

The light they provide is welcome, even though it is insufficient. As I understand the history, these boxes are remnants of Ed Bacon's proposal for this area, which was much more ambitious about connecting the ground level and the underground, both visually and physically.

Time for some history. The redevelopment of Penn Center, or Market Street West, came about when the Pennsylvania Railroad decided to demolish a railroad viaduct that ran through the area. And Ed Bacon decided to kibitz on the redevelopment plans. According to my old friend Ken Halpern, "Conceptually, Bacon thought that rather than just clear the site, the railroad should actually excavate to one level below ground. A sunken garden with flowers and fountains could then let light and air down to commuters using the subway, trolley, and commuter rail complex located below grade at this spot, later to be called Penn Center." Office towers would be oriented north-south to maximize light to the street and the lower level. (Kenneth Halpern, Downtown USA, 1978, p. 107.)

The railroad decided to go in a different direction: "The final solution for Penn Center placed the towers in the east-west direction, with a concrete deck instead of a sunken plaza. Bacon did manage to get the railroad to provide three sunken gardens." (Halpern, p. 107, caption 159.)

At any rate, the escalators are located in one of the light boxes, and another one has an elevator. Why not? The light boxes were already doomed to failure. Why not get some moving stairs and even an elevator in there and claim a victory for modern technology, if not for modern architecture?

The Big Fail
The escalators aren't terrible. Here's what is. Readers of this blog may recall a previous discussion of the underground entrance to the Love Park garage.

This is an extremely convenient underground connection between an 810-car parking garage and City Hall, the Municipal Services Building - basically the entire City Hall district. Say it's raining and you're late for lunch at the Bellevue. No problem. Take the concourse down South Broad to Walnut. Exit at the famous hotel's front door.

I do think the design and current physical state of this garage entrance leave something to be desired. It's not like the Love Park designers don't know how to do a garage entrance. Here's what they did up on the surface.

One Win, One Question Mark
Further west there are two newer buildings that have done interesting things with their connections to the concourse.

The Mellon Bank building, which runs from Market to JFK along 18th Street, has a nice, fairly understated doorway that connects to the Suburban Station concourse. A nondescript corridor leads from the door to the building elevators.

As you're walking to the elevators, if you look to your left, you will see this.

This is a really pretty space. What is it for? I don't know. The stairs do lead to doors that take you to the outside world. As you can see, there doesn't seem to be a lot of through traffic.

I called the building manager, CBRE, and spoke with Tom Flach, who told me the space was originally intended to be a restaurant. That concept didn't gain traction, so now it's used from time to time for tenant events. I told him how much I loved the structure, and he mentioned the child's toy K'NEX. I think he's right. I'm channeling my inner child when I gaze at this wonderful little glass house, homesteading among a gaggle of truly enormous office towers.

The entrance way to the Comcast building, across the street, is similarly understated, but even before you go in you can see people at the cafe tables in the food court. Upstairs from the food court, at ground level, there is a large plaza in front of the building, populated by an outdoor cafe and lots of bicycle parking. Every time I go there it seems they've added more racks. In the large lobby there is the famous 87-foot video wall that has become a significant tourist attraction.

As Inga Saffron wrote shortly before the building officially opened in 2008, "It's still early, but Comcast's plaza cafe and concourse mall promise to become a bustling urban nexus." And that's what happened.

But that's not all that happened. The concourse mall leads to a large, pleasant corridor that takes the visitor all the way to Arch Street, where (gasp) there is a midblock crossing (installed in 2015) that takes you on a lovely midblock ramble through a plaza next to a large fountain and delivers you to Logan Square. You can also go to the Wawa on the north side of Arch Street.

Recently my friend John Friedman and I were exploring and we found the corridor that leads to the new Comcast building. It's open to the public and very nice, but long and serpentine. We asked a young man who was walking near us if we were headed the right way, and he said yes and then made sure we got to the escalator that takes you up through the lobby to a very nice coffee shop on the mezzanine. After you do this once, the navigation is easy. Another win, in my opinion, supplemented by yet another midblock crossing on 18th if you prefer being outside.

So it does seem that we're getting better at this underground circulation stuff. From Dilworth Park to the Comcast building, we have good examples of cutting edge urban design. In between we have some older efforts that fall short. I'm hoping that somewhere there is a constituency for going back and fixing some of the mistakes. I'd start with the underground door to the Love Park garage.

Remember the rules: use daylight to reduce anxiety and provide orientation; find the desire lines and use them; and build entrances that are an invitation and not a threat.

See also Road Diet by Love Park - a Natural Experiment; Love Park Garage: Close the 15th Street Exit.