CCRA Attacks SS Bridge Design

The Center City Residents Asso-ciation has launched a major assault on the city's planned design for rebuilding the decaying and structurally deficient South Street Bridge. In a strongly worded letter signed by President Vivian C. Seltzer, and mailed Aug. 8 to a full-page worth of city officials, the neighborhood group complains that the Gannett Fleming/H2L2 design will insert an inappropriate, interstate-scaled bridge into a fine-grained pedestrian neighborhood.

I made some similar arguments in my Feb. 9 post and recent columns. But the group's letter shows just how widely held those concerns are. "It appears evident," the CCRA letter complains. "that the principal design criteria for the Bridge were to feed more traffic to and from existing ramps, and to accommodate large trucks" - hardly the conditions necessary to promote an evening's stroll between Center City and the Penn campus.
That's just the warm up. Not only is this the wrong bridge in the wrong place, the CCRA argues, but the new design will actually be "less safe to all users, including an estimated 4,000 pedestrians and 1,000 cyclists" who cross daily. The group predicts that wheelchair users will be especially vulnerable as turning motorists whip around the newly curved corners that will lead to the world's most scary highway access ramps. The group is especially irked that the city and PennDot are investing $50 million in deluxe turning lanes, without doing squat to make those merge-or-die ramps on I-76 any safer. "It seems only logical that any bridge design should be compatible with a future ramp redesign," the letter argues. Sounds reasonable to me.

Like anyone who has ever glanced at the official rendering (above), the CCRA was thoroughly non-plussed by the pasted-on design elements the city intends to use in a pathetic attempt to disguise the standard highway bridge. "Of even greater worry, however, is the opportunity the proposed semi-enclosed stainless steel towers create for high-risk hiding places for muggers, convenient urinals, trash receptacles and as targets for vandalism."

None of these are new complaints. But coming from a well-run, influential neighborhood group like the CCRA, these points ought to carry weight with the decision-makers, if not John Street, then certainly mayor-to-be Michael Nutter. Up until now, the Streets Department has stubbornly stuck to its position that 1) this is the only way to build a new South Street Bridge, 2) it's too late to think about it any more, 3)and besides, a nice bridge would cost too much. The department's engineers - and other city officials - should be required to read Saturday's stunning Op-Ed in the New York Times by David P. Billington, a Princeton University professor and renowned bridge expert. The article was written in response to the Minneapolis bridge collapse, but applies equally to the South Street Bridge. He maintains that bridge designers have gotten lazy and simply insert one-bridge-fits-all highway designs into any situation. Billington says American engineers need to start designing bridges that are specific to their place and task - and also beautiful. In this case, the place is a dense rowhouse neighborhood with a postcard-worthy view of the Center City skyline. The task is to make that a view that everyone can enjoy, whether they're traveling by foot, bike, wheelchair or car. Maybe it's time for someone in City Hall to sign up this guy Billington as a consultant.