Phoundations of Philly: The Schuylkill Expressway
Fully opened for traffic November 25, 1958, Philadelphia’s Schuylkill Expressway [...]
Phoundations of Philly: The Schuylkill Expressway
Fully opened for traffic November 25, 1958, Philadelphia’s Schuylkill Expressway [...]
Fully opened for traffic November 25, 1958, Philadelphia’s Schuylkill Expressway was gridlocked from the first day of its operation. Envisioned by city planners as a panacea for economy-suffocating urban traffic congestion, but built on flawed engineering assumptions about traffic flows, the expressway ignored any concern for postwar social and regional realities. Rather than being acclaimed, within years the highway was decried, ignominiously branded the “Surekill Distressway.”
After World War II, Philadelphia boosters rallied behind the idea of modern freeways and pressed for a submerged Vine Street Expressway to relieve congestion from traffic flowing into the city from New Jersey via the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Constructed between 1950 and 1959, much of it before the availability of federal funds derived from the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, the original Schuylkill Expressway largely predated modern highway standards. By 1962, fatal accidents occurred frequently, and experts identified ten potential deathtraps.
In 1970, with federal funds, the state completely redesigned and rebuilt the complex of on- and-off ramps in the vicinity of City Line Avenue and the Roosevelt Boulevard Extension. In the 1980s, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation added new lanes and rebuilt shoulders along the entire eighteen-mile length of the highway.
Long the busiest highway in Pennsylvania, by the twenty-first century the expressway carried 163,000 vehicles daily within Philadelphia County and 109,000 more vehicles daily in adjoining suburban Montgomery County. Its heavy use profoundly impacted the growth of the Philadelphia region. It especially opened the city’s western suburbs to intensive residential and industrial development, making Montgomery County, for example, a center of American pharmaceutical industrialism and boosting one of the largest shopping malls in America at King of Prussia. That intense growth, plus the traffic from North Philadelphia and Bucks County flowing from the Roosevelt Boulevard Extension of the expressway, daily flooded the highway with commuter vehicles. Thus, notwithstanding several rebuildings, the Schuylkill Expressway still ranked as one of the most dangerous and congested commuter highways in America in the early twenty-first century.
Fully opened for traffic November 25, 1958, Philadelphia’s Schuylkill Expressway was gridlocked from the first day of its operation. Envisioned by city planners as a panacea for economy-suffocating urban traffic congestion, but built on flawed engineering assumptions about traffic flows, the expressway ignored any concern for postwar social and regional realities. Rather than being acclaimed, within years the highway was decried, ignominiously branded the “Surekill Distressway.”
After World War II, Philadelphia boosters rallied behind the idea of modern freeways and pressed for a submerged Vine Street Expressway to relieve congestion from traffic flowing into the city from New Jersey via the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Constructed between 1950 and 1959, much of it before the availability of federal funds derived from the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, the original Schuylkill Expressway largely predated modern highway standards. By 1962, fatal accidents occurred frequently, and experts identified ten potential deathtraps.
In 1970, with federal funds, the state completely redesigned and rebuilt the complex of on- and-off ramps in the vicinity of City Line Avenue and the Roosevelt Boulevard Extension. In the 1980s, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation added new lanes and rebuilt shoulders along the entire eighteen-mile length of the highway.
Long the busiest highway in Pennsylvania, by the twenty-first century the expressway carried 163,000 vehicles daily within Philadelphia County and 109,000 more vehicles daily in adjoining suburban Montgomery County. Its heavy use profoundly impacted the growth of the Philadelphia region. It especially opened the city’s western suburbs to intensive residential and industrial development, making Montgomery County, for example, a center of American pharmaceutical industrialism and boosting one of the largest shopping malls in America at King of Prussia. That intense growth, plus the traffic from North Philadelphia and Bucks County flowing from the Roosevelt Boulevard Extension of the expressway, daily flooded the highway with commuter vehicles. Thus, notwithstanding several rebuildings, the Schuylkill Expressway still ranked as one of the most dangerous and congested commuter highways in America in the early twenty-first century.
