Walking to Philly

One of my fondest memories is attached to the walkway on the Ben Franklin Bridge. The Phillies had won the 2008 World Series and we were on our way to the parade. To avoid all the traffic, my sister, my brother, and I parked in Camden and took a walk, screaming our lungs off alongside the other fans. This memory always makes me think. Why can't we walk to more that Philly has to offer from New Jersey? Why can't families bike to the Linc or to Frankford? We should make it a priority to expand our walkways over the Delaware between SJ and SE-PA. The Betsy Ross and especially the Walt Whitman should be the two highest priority bridges.

The Walt Whitman Bridge, from the Philadelphia Side. Credit: pontla, flickr.com

The 1997 predicted value of a pedestrian walkway on both sides of the Verrazano-Narrows bridge was $25 million. Adjusted for inflation, that equals $36.5 million in 2015, everything else remaining constant. If we divide this value by the length of the Verrazano, we get a cost of $2,665/ linear foot. If we apply this ratio to the shorter Walt Whitman, at 11,981 feet  (we are likely over estimating, given the costs of building in NYC  and the fact that the Walt is just two years older than the Verrazano), we see that the cost would amount to just under $32 million. Keep in mind that this back-of-the-envelope estimate applies to building a walkway on both sides of the bridge. If we applied this cost to just one side, the walkway would cost $16 million.

This might seem steep, but consider some of the other improvements included in the DVRPC's Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) 2014 - 17.  In Camden County alone, there are several multimillion dollar projects that offer returns I would deem questionable. One example, below, is the Improvements to the Intersection of Route 30 (White Horse Pike) and Eversham Road. A few left-hand turn lanes and a year later we've spent $6.8 million. And let's not even consider the tremendous cost of the Route 295/76/42 connection (not to say that this isn't a decent improvement, because it is). Again, all of these projects are Camden County alone – we're not even considering what could be accomplished with the pooled resources from our nine county area. If we can fund questionable improvements like the Route 30/Evesham intersection, we can certainly fund interstate improvements that would vastly improve the region's bike and pedestrian infrastructure and serve populations disproportionately unlikely to have access to a car. 

Obviously accessibility is at least somewhat a concern, as we are expected to add a bike- and wheelchair-friendly ramp to the Ben soon. But this should serve as just the beginning. Maybe by the time the Phils win their next World Series (in another 28 years), I'll have the opportunity to walk to a home game, straight from South Jersey.

A Regional Tool

Hey everyone,

It's been a bit since the last post, but I wanted to take a minute to mention two things upcoming that I'm really excited about.

For one, I am working on a tool that should help with planning advocacy in our region. It will be a calendar that includes planning, zoning, redevelopment, and any other commission you can imagine, meetings throughout South Jersey. It'll include county and state board info and even some for the bigger/more critical municipalities. This takes more time than you'd imagine, as the data is ridiculously spread out and no one wants to make it easy for people to show up at a meeting when it could cause them some trouble. It's sapped a bit more time than I'm happy with but should be done this week.

The reason I even began preparing this tool is that it formed out of a discussion with several other planners and urbanim-minded people in the region last month. We've come together as a group that's pretty informal at this point, but our second meeting is this week. We're interested in working as a watchdog/advocacy group for responsible planning in the region. After this week there'll be more to say about it, but for now you should check out the facebook group we've been using to plan: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1425776957705366/

If you're interested in coming to the meeting, shoot me a message for more info.