Checking in With MLK Drive

A Visit on a Gloomy Day

By the Art Museum.

In early August, the City of Philadelphia reopened Martin Luther King Drive to motor vehicles, but only on the upriver portion of the Drive, extending from Sweetbrier Drive to the Falls Bridge. The downriver portion, running from Sweetbrier down to the Eakins Oval in front of the Art Museum, remained closed to motor vehicles but open to people engaged in active mobility, such as walkers, runners, bicyclists, skate boarders, inline skaters. (For a story in the Inquirer, click here.)

The City had closed all of MLK Drive to motor vehicles in March 2020, and usage by body-powered vehicles skyrocketed. 

When the City originally said it was reopening MLK Drive to motor vehicles, it had intended to reopen the whole Drive, but inspection of the MLK bridge over the Schuylkill, located on the downriver portion of MLK Drive near the Art Museum, showed that the structure was more deteriorated than had been anticipated. Cars needed to stay off, but pedestrians and bicyclists could safely use the bridge and were welcome.

Naturally, there was a great deal of debate about the City's plan to reopen MLK Drive to cars. The active users, led as usual by the bicyclists, were not happy about losing MLK Drive; the car huggers were thrilled to get the Drive back. But all of it was predicated on the idea that the full length of MLK Drive would be reopened to cars. 

And that's not what happened. The crucial downriver segment of the Drive, from Sweetbrier down to Eakins Oval, remained closed to cars and open to uncars.

I'd been wondering for a while how that was working out, and so Friday I went out to MLK Drive and had a look. 

It was a quiet, gloomy day threatening rain. 

MLK bridge from the Spring Garden bridge.

There was construction activity. Workers were installing scaffolding under the bridge deck.

MLK bridge and the underpass to Kelly Drive. 

And it turned out that I had missed this year's Philly Naked Bike Ride. Oh well. 

Drat. Missed it.

There weren't a lot of people out - as I said, it was a quiet day. But the lower stretch of MLK Drive clearly remains Valhalla for active mobility. Here are two shots from the Spring Garden bridge.

Looking downriver.

Looking upriver.

I also had a look at the upriver section of MLK Drive. I don't have anything to add to what has already been said. I think the renovated sidepath is lovely and would be quite satisfactory except for the fact that it is utterly insufficient to handle the volume of traffic we have seen during the pandemic. And, as expected, some bicyclists are using the buffered shoulders on the cartway as bicycle lanes. I think it would have been much better if the City had installed a two-way cycle track on the river side of the cartway. 

One thing the current setup proves is that there is room for two motor vehicle lanes and a cycle track for bikes. Just look at the road, and then pick up the upland shoulder and its buffer and drop it down next to the shoulder on the river side. Then, with your foot, push the motor vehicle lanes over so they touch the upland curb.

I was in a car at this point, and so I decided to do the easy thing and drive back down Kelly Drive, on the other side of the river. There was quite a lot more traffic on Kelly Drive than there had been on MLK Drive, and the usual contingent was doing its 50+ mph in a 35 zone that should be a 25 zone. 

In my experience, Kelly Drive has always had more traffic than MLK Drive. After all the brouhaha about reopening MLK Drive, I think I had naively expected to see a lot more car traffic on MLK Drive. 

I thought about it a bit, and this idea came to me. MLK Drive, with the required turnoff at Sweetbriar, takes you to the zoo. Kelly Drive, with the aid of its direct connection to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, takes you to City Hall. So if you're in Wynnefield, and you want to go to City Hall, which way are you going to go?

What, in the end, did Council Member Curtis Jones gain for his constituents?

Then I had another thought. When the bridge closes completely for reconstruction, which will probably happen fairly soon, where are all the runners and walkers and bikers and skaters and scooters going to go? The quick answer is Kelly Drive, where there will not be room for them. (I went back to MLK Drive on Saturday afternoon, and in the intervening hours the upriver side of the bridge had been blocked off.)

Motorists have lots of choices for routes in this area - a century's worth of traffic engineers have made sure of that. But active mobility has only MLK Drive. I'm unsure what's going to happen here.

Head left to Schuylkill Banks.

See also The War Over MLK Drive; Is It a Park, or Is It a Traffic Sewer?

Buried Under the Tarmac

Belgian Block, Check. Trolley Tracks, Check.

Trolley track, on its side.

Our block got a new water main this year. I for one found it very educational to watch the job unfold. There were distinct aspects of archaeology as layers of the past were opened to the light of day. 

The rails started coming out of the ground quite early. The Belgian block, on the other hand, was playing hide and seek. Eventually we did start to get some, but it seems clear that much of the old pavement on this bit of street had been carted away during prior reconstructions. The basic profile here is asphalt on top of a layer of concrete on top of dirt. Down in the dirt are the water pipes, so we wound up seeing a lot of dirt as well. 

Another block near us was also getting a new water main, and I visited it occasionally as well. Stretches, at least, had the old road virtually intact under the asphalt. Here's a shot that can give you an idea of what Philadelphia's streets looked like in 1910 or 1890.

Some background: The original streetcars in Philadelphia were drawn by horses, and they first showed up in 1858. Electrification arrived several decades later. Here is an article on Philly's streetcar history, which notes that an electric line went in on Bainbridge and Catharine Streets in 1892.

And then there were a bunch of these things. They are pieces of the old railroad ties (or sleepers, as the English call them). The hexagonal piece of metal you see sticking out of the wood is the head of something called a hex-head screw spike. I had never seen or heard of such a thing before, but apparently they were quite popular in years gone by. 

The advantage over the regular railroad spike is that you don't have to drive the spike with a really big hammer. Instead, you can use a large spanner to screw it into the wood. The little tab is a separate piece, kind of like a washer. I think its purpose is to reach out and hold down the lip on the bottom of the rail. 

I couldn't resist salvaging a few of these screw spikes. 

See also Missing the Point, On a Slow Boat to China, Transit Memories, Scavengers and Scow Trimmers.