Civilizing the South Street Bridge

Let's Take a Victory Lap - and Then Do More

The South Street bridge is quite possibly the best piece of bike-ped infrastructure in the city of Philadelphia. It is also quite possibly the most heavily used: Combined pedestrians, bicycles, and scooters may match or exceed the traffic volume for motor vehicles.

I don't think the data assembled below prove my case conclusively, but I do think I've presented a very strong hypothesis. Let's take a look at some numbers.

Counting Noses

A little while ago I got the idea to take another close look at the South Street bridge. I'd written a number of stories about the bridge in previous years, but it had been quite a while since I had actually gone there and just lingered.

When I did go and look, I confess I was surprised by the volume of pedestrian and bicycle and scooter traffic that I was seeing. So, on Thursday, September 14 (stories like this do take me a while), I grabbed my last old reporter's notebook and a pen and walked over to the South Street bridge and counted bikes and scooters and pedestrians. Cars were excluded from the plan, because I knew from experience that the combined volumes would be too great to handle. (By the way, I plan to continue doing this work by hand. I'm just switching to artist's sketch books from Blick. I like the paper better.) 

I counted from 4:30 to 5:30 pm. Originally I had intended to count both eastbound and westbound traffic, but it soon became obvious that this was simply too much for one person to count, and I focused on eastbound traffic.  I also excluded the ramp that runs from the north side of the bridge down to the Schuylkill boardwalk. There's a bunch of traffic there, but I needed to focus on the main thing: eastbound bikes, scooters, and pedestrians.

I counted 311 bicycles, 47 scooters, and 453 pedestrians. For a total of 811.

Near the Roberts building.

Just so you know, rush hour was already well under way before I started counting, and it continued strongly after I stopped counting. I counted in 15 minute intervals. The biggest interval for bikes and scooters began at 5:00, and the biggest interval for pedestrians began at 5:15.

Some people may be interested to know that most of the traffic came in pods. I believe these are organized by the stoplights located at the west end of the bridge, near the access and exit ramps to the Schuylkill Expressway. The largest pod for bikes was 24, in the 5:00 segment. The largest pod for pedestrians was 35, in the 5:15 segment.

I worked at Penn in the late seventies and early eighties, and I often walked home across the South Street bridge. Other people also walked the bridge, but not in the numbers we're seeing now. I frankly don't remember bicyclists on the bridge - and there were no bike lanes, of course. And there were no e-scooters.

A big change.

Heading for the ramp.

What About the Cars?

My plan had not included counting cars, but with the bike-ped numbers I was looking at, I became curious how they would stack up against the motor-vehicle traffic. Back in 2017 I had counted eastbound cars for a story called No Turn on Red. I went back and had a look. 

On Thursday, August 24, 2017, I counted eastbound motor vehicles from 10:45 to 11:45 am; I counted a total of 617 motor vehicles. Later, between 4:50 and 5:50, I counted 671 motor vehicles. And on the morning of August 25, from 7:50 to 8:50 am, I counted 611 motor vehicles. The average of these three counts is 633.

So I put that up against the 811 for bikes, scooters, and pedestrians, and I decided that the motor vehicles were in the minority. 

(There are also Septa buses on the bridge. I haven't been able to figure out how to count the number of passengers on a bus that's driving past me, but I hope we can agree that a number for bus passengers would put the cars and trucks further in the minority. A counter-argument would be that some cars actually have more than one person in them. My sense is that the vast majority of the cars at rush hour have one person in them, but again I don't have a number.)

My argument would be stronger with 2023 motor-vehicle data. I'd also love to have westbound data, and traffic data for the ramp that leads down to the Schuylkill boardwalk. I won't be doing any of these counts anytime soon, so if you're interested, please feel free to go ahead. And please also publish your findings.

The city from the ramp.

What's Next for the Bridge?

I'm thinking that things are going pretty well on the bridge, but there are certainly improvement opportunities, and we should not be resting on our laurels.

One of my big concerns has been the garage entrance on the bridge, for people who are visiting the Roberts building of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. This entrance, located on the south side of the bridge, not far from 27th street, is currently closed for construction - CHOP is building a new building on top of the garage. 

The history of this garage entrance is a sad story of incompetent community activists getting their way. It was a mistake to put this entrance here, and I hope it stays closed. 

The rather hairy intersection at the eastern foot of the bridge has, thank goodness, gotten a No Turn on Red sign, as I mentioned last month. 

I'm also very fond of another idea that dates back to 2017. Currently, at the eastern foot of the bridge, there is one motor-vehicle lane westbound, and there are two lanes eastbound. I'd like to see two lanes westbound and one lane eastbound, and the eastbound bike lane pushed to the curb. Currently this bike lane floats between the two eastbound lanes of motor-vehicle traffic. (For more details - it's a fairly complicated argument - see No Turn on Red.)

The city from the boardwalk.

A Place Rather than a Pipe

Beyond tweaks to improve traffic flow - and safety - I'd like us to start thinking about the bridge as a place rather than just a pipe. The bread and butter of any bridge is always going to be moving people and goods from one side of a river to the other. But, throughout history, there has almost always been a social side to bridges.  

This history often begins before there is a bridge. Usually there was a ford, or a ferry, and then a bridge might come along later. 

All of these crossing types have tended to cause people and wagons to pile up for a variety of reasons - waiting for the ferry to come back from the other side, for instance. Because there were travelers who weren't going anywhere, locals tended to find ways to offer hospitality - a tavern or an inn, perhaps a stable - and towns would grow up. That's why England has towns with names like Oxford and Cambridge. 

Commerce was not limited to the land at the feet of the bridge. London Bridge was lined with buildings that housed shops facing out onto the roadway. These buildings tended to become larger over the years. It's not clear that the bridge was originally designed to sustain so much weight, and that may be why we have the nursery rhyme "London Bridge Is Falling Down." (There are other explanations.) The Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge) in Florence is similarly lined with shops. Years ago they were butcher shops;  current occupants include jewelers, art dealers, and of course souvenir sellers. The Karluv Most (Charles Bridge) in Prague is now a pedestrian bridge (as is the Ponte Vecchio). Artists and artisans bring their wares to the bridge and set up on the sidewalks near the parapet.

Nowadays, of course, our bridges are designed to move motor vehicles as rapidly as possible from one end to the other, and that is pretty much all they are designed for. (Getting the designers of the new South Street bridge to include proper bike lanes and other amenities was a long and arduous process.)

What might the South Street bridge look like if we took a broader view of its potential? I'm thinking that activating the bridge as a destination probably won't look at all like London Bridge, or the Ponte Vecchio, or the Karluv Most.

Frankly I have no idea what it will look like. But I do know that we have the views of the city from the bridge, we have the ramp down to the boardwalk, we have the plaza by the Roberts building, and there is a cafe inside the Roberts building, next to the plaza. (You can see the cafe through the building's glass walls. It's open to the public, and I've eaten there. The food is okay, and the surroundings are very pleasant. And there is a bike rack near the front door.) 

I'm saying, there are already some pretty nice pieces in place. Maybe somebody smarter than me can figure out how to get them to work together.

The eastern foot of the bridge still has issues.

And Ospreys

While I was doing my count, a pedestrian lady stopped and engaged me in conversation. She wanted to know what I was doing, and I told her, and we had a nice chat. She seemed to really like her walks home across the bridge. She told me that on a recent day an osprey had flown directly over her head. 

Ospreys are very large and, I think, beautiful birds, and it had never occurred to me that even one of them might be living in Philadelphia.

See also By the Market Street Bridge; Come for the Sights; Willoughby Avenue, Fort Greene, Brooklyn; The Mustangs of 23rd Street.