Getting On and Off the Ben Franklin Bridge
You can actually stand next to Isamu Noguchi's 1984 Bolt of Lightning, which stands at the foot of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia. I hadn't realized it was possible to get close to the sculpture. The way I got there is twisty, but it is neither illegal nor life-threatening.
Most people only see Noguchi's work while riding in a car on the bridge. It's not the best way to look at a piece of art.
When I finally found myself standing next to it, I liked the sculpture for the first time. My windshield view had been of an undersized, disjointed, somewhat tentative piece dominated by its site, which was a boring mass of gray stone. All of it together struck me as lacking texture, depth, and color.
The actual sculpture is 101 feet tall and, seen from below, all the twists and turns finally make sense. Even the color of the key comes into its own. From the bridge, the key basically disappears.
Here's a more formal portrait, not taken from a car.
The setting does get a lot of help from the trees in Franklin Square, on the other side of Sixth Street. I think more green would be helpful, particularly in the foreground. If you don't want to do trees, then maybe bushes in pots.
By the way, it's not like people aren't trying to improve this whole area at the foot of the Ben Franklin Bridge. Here's a formerly blank retaining wall that's part of the ramp that takes cars from the bridge to Seventh Street, and the Vine Street Expressway.
Here's a wider shot of the same area. Murals and a bit of gardening can go a long way.
(This wall is part of a large series of murals that extend on both sides of Sixth Street. They are called Electric Philadelphia and were installed in 2020. For more information, click here. For a story on other artwork connected to the bridge, click here.)
Two Interstates and a Bridge Walk into a Bar
The foot of the Ben Franklin Bridge needs to accommodate a lot of traffic. After all, the bridge, the Vine Street Expressway, and I-95 all need to tangle together, and the result is going to be a bowl of spaghetti, as access and exit ramps and main roads all connect with one another.
However, the foot of the bridge is smack in the middle of one of the most historical neighborhoods in Philadelphia, and one where the residential population is growing rapidly. Yes, people do live here, and developers are busy making more space for more of them. So maybe we need to look at the balance between the demands of a transportation network and the needs of a residential neighborhood.
Here's a shot of the Ben Franklin Bridge from Monument Plaza, where the Noguchi sculpture is located. Note that there are seven lanes of traffic. A moveable barrier allows the bridge to accommodate four lanes of traffic inbound, or four lanes outbound, depending on demand. So how do you get onto the bridge, and how do you get off?
(Note the blue gantry that spans all seven lanes, and carries the green and red signal lights.)
Turning Fettuccine into Spaghetti
One day my wife and I were driving up Fifth Street to get on the bridge. We do this a lot. But on this day, Lois asked me why there was such a strange merge on the access ramp. Here's a picture of what she was talking about.
As you can see, when Fifth Street crosses Race and becomes an on-ramp for the bridge, it suddenly goes on a diet, dropping from two lanes to one. Call it turning fettuccine into spaghetti. You'll notice that painted arrows apparently didn't do the job, so now we have orange cones as well.
The amount of space the orange cones allow for merging from the right lane into the surviving left lane is almost comically inadequate, and indeed the merge now frequently happens in the middle of the intersection - that is, smack in the middle of Race Street.
I hadn't liked this intersection and merge very much for a long time, but that's true about a lot of the things that Philly's streets do, and I have to pick and choose. Well, I chose this, and a few weeks later I was standing at Fifth and Race, taking pictures and wondering how to make things better. Not perfect, just better.
After fumbling around a bit, I found something. Here's a picture of the intersection and ramp from further south on Fifth Street. Note the parked van on the right.
You can see that, in front of the van, Fifth Street develops a turning lane at Race. It's important to be nice to the Race Street traffic here, because Race is the way you get to I-95.
However, I think we need to balance the Race Street turn with the need to merge for the on-ramp to the bridge. And here's what I would do. I would extend the existing parking lane to the corner, and make the next lane to the left the turning lane.
I know, I know. People tromping up from Independence Hall, many of whom don't live here - we do love our visitors - are quite likely to arrive at Race Street in the right lane and not want to turn right. So they will merge, and the knowledgeable drivers in the far left-hand lane - the only one designated for bridge traffic - will of course courteously let them into line.
Or not. That's the downside of my proposal. I do think, on balance, that my proposal would be a better use of this space. By better I mean safer.
The Many Complications of Fifth Street
By the way, Fifth Street here is a complicated little piece of real estate. Just before Race, Fifth actually splits into three pieces. What we've been looking at is the the left-hand piece, as you look north. Just to the right is the middle piece, which goes into a tunnel that takes you north of the bridge.
There is also a pedestrian tunnel up on the bridge that allows you to walk underneath the seven lanes of traffic. Here's the southern entrance.
The tunnel is shallow and short, making it a relatively easy walk. There is an odor of urine, but it is not overpowering. And there are murals.
(While we're on tunnels, Patco continues to work on reopening its Franklin Square station, which last operated in 1979. For a story, click here.)
Let's go back aboveground, where the right-hand piece of Fifth extends to Race and offers an alternative place to turn and go to I-95. It doesn't seem to get very much use, but I don't have any data.
If this right-hand branch is indeed superfluous, I think it would be a nice place to plant some trees and grass. The landscaping of the U.S. Mint, the very large building on the east side of Fifth here, reminds me of the Gobi Desert. It is a stark contrast to Independence Mall, on the west side of the street, where we have trees and grass and red brick. But, pending data, I'm not going to press the point.
(A trailing thought: It might be best to turn Fifth Street into three one-lane strands of spaghetti back in the mid-block, well before Race. I'd lose my parklet over by the mint, but this may be the best solution.)
Three On-Ramps
There are actually three on-ramps in this area. In addition to the Fifth Street ramp we've been talking about, there's a ramp that accepts traffic from Race Street, and another ramp that accepts traffic from Sixth Street, which includes vehicles that have just gotten off the Vine Street Expressway.
The other two ramps have also had their road diets, with the orange cones.
These three strands of spaghetti effectively block pedestrian access from the south to Monument Plaza and the Noguchi sculpture. Just before I took the picture above I had a brief and pleasant conversation with a police officer who asked me if I was going to try to walk across the access ramps to Race Street. I assured her I was not even thinking about it. She told me that people do try to cross here.
I believe her. I just don't want to think about it.
Okay, I do have a picture of the third on-ramp, but I'm getting tired of orange cones, and I think you may be as well. Let's move on.
Wait a second. Let me just add that I think the designers should be given credit for slimming each of these on-ramps down by a lane. I'm hopeful, with the next repaving, that they will actually move the curbstones in, so we can get rid of the orange cones. This is, after all, the closest thing Philadelphia has to a front door, and we want our front door to look nice, don't we.
A Park Waiting to Happen
My big surprise was waiting for me on the north side of the bridge. I'd been trying to figure out if there was a way to get next to the Noguchi sculpture, and looking at maps and aerial photographs and driving by on Sixth Street led me to believe that there might be a way. So I took the Market-Frankford line down to Old City and walked up Fourth Street, and there I found my new favorite street, North Marginal Road, which runs westward next to the bridge from Fourth.
Actually, I mainly like the name, although North Marginal does have a nice Belgian block roadway and is also next to St.Augustine Church, which dates from 1848 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This is a replacement building. The original church, completed in 1801, was burned down during anti-Catholic riots in 1844.
North Marginal takes you to an interesting bowl of spaghetti. Most traffic coming off the bridge continues on to Seventh Street and distributes itself from there, but there is a small earlier turnoff that takes you to Fifth Street. I'd never taken that turn. Well, here's what it looks like from a pedestrian point of view, looking from the north. (If you look carefully, you can see the blue signal gantry over the bridge deck, at the far left.)
The street on the right is Fifth Street. It runs northbound. You can see a lane splitting off and heading east. It hooks up with Marginal Road and takes you to Fourth, which runs southbound under the bridge. I looked at the piece of road directly to my left, and figured out that it was another branch of Fifth Street that runs north for several blocks as the tunnel slowly emerges from the ground. We'll get back to this branch of Fifth Street a little later.
You'll notice some small trees in the central area, which is paved with Belgian block. Here's where I got started thinking. My thoughts started small, but they just kept building.
There are 15 tree pits in this area. Only six have trees in them. The others have stumps. Here's a view from the south, next to the bridge.
I think we need to plant nine trees. And lose the Belgian block. Install grass.
Okay, look again at the eastern branch of Fifth, running down to Vine. It has no reason to exist. Let's replace it with grass. Look at the rather nice wrought iron fence east of the sidewalk. Behind it is a large rectangle of grass. You could join the green areas we have just created with the existing rectangle of grass and make a nice little park.
Why bother? Who cares? Let me remind you that the population in this area is growing rapidly. I have seen preschool groups come from here and go to the grass and an actual playground in Franklin Square.
(Yes, there is actually a pedestrian crosswalk in this area that takes you across Sixth Street, and another that takes you across the exit ramp from the Vine Street Expressway and into Franklin Square. I have driven through this area hundreds of times, and I never registered that there was a crosswalk across Sixth. This might be an interesting study in human factors engineering.)
Here's a group of preschoolers crossing Fifth on their way to play.
Not a lot of parks in this neighborhood. Let's add one.
Stretch Goal
And now for my stretch goal. My casual observation suggests that none of these streets is heavily used. If a traffic survey were to confirm my hunch, I'd say let's close the whole thing at the initial exit point up at the foot of the bridge, and turn it all into a park.
The vast majority of the traffic coming off the bridge goes onto a very wide exit ramp that carries everyone over to Seventh Street, where they can get on the Vine Street Expressway or the local lanes on Vine, or go north on Seventh, or follow another spaghetti loop around onto Sixth, which runs south. So what's the point of the elaborate, and tiny, distribution network to Fifth and Fourth? I don't know.
I'd keep Marginal Road and its Belgian block pavement. It hooks up with North Lawrence Street, which hosts a variety of buildings, including a wholesale food distributor, in addition to a rear entrance for St. Augustine. This block, with its mixed uses, reminds me of Jane Jacobs' Greenwich Village.
Walkway to Nowhere
One more thing. Here's a piece of turf and trees that lies just west of Fifth.
You'll note there's a pathway. It apparently used to lead up to the walkway that runs across the bridge on the north side. Not anymore. When you reach Fifth Street - this is where the cars turn off from the bridge deck - you're not allowed to cross. You need to walk down next to Fifth until you reach Vine, cross there, and walk back uphill to the bridge walkway.
I say rip out this functionless and misleading walkway and plant grass.
Or, if you're willing to go whole hog on the park thing, keep the walkway and have an uninterrupted pathway from Sixth Street across the bridge to New Jersey.
Earlier Proposals
Let me now take you back to those thrilling days of yesteryear - 2015 to be exact - so we can look at some earlier proposals to improve the foot of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.
The first of these proposals came from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. They were interested in the southern on-ramps and suggested eliminating the ramp from Sixth Street and the ramp from Race Street. The Race Street traffic would have been sent to the Fifth Street entrance, and the Vine Street Expressway traffic, which uses the Sixth Street entrance, would have been given a new ramp next to the existing exit ramp from the bridge, allowing Vine Street Expressway traffic to exit directly to the bridge rather than use Sixth Street, as it currently does.
I was hesitant about this proposal - I had questions about cost and feasibility. But the idea of turning the area south of Monument Plaza into a garden was certainly attractive.
Shortly after the PHS proposal, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission came out with a design to calm traffic on Race Street from Eight to Sixth. The design included a bike lane. (For DVRPC's full report, click here. For the Old City District's Vision 2026 Framework, published in 2016, click here.)
Neither of these proposals has advanced since 2015. By 2017 the PHS proposal appeared to be thoroughly mired.
As for the traffic calming on Race, I simply have no idea why this hasn't happened. It strikes me as basically a no-brainer - a cheap and effective way to calm traffic on Race and improve access to Franklin Square.
One Last Note
Someone might want to fix this bit of masonry. It's in Monument Plaza.
See also Transportation Should Not Trump Destination, Permeable Blocks, Second and Chestnut, The Invitation, The Future of Christ Church Park.
