For what it's worth, I think the center ramps could work if they were slightly longer somehow and, more importantly, if visibility could be improved by redesigning the concrete barrier between the ramp and the adjacent lane.
ELISABETH DUBIN hillierARCHITECTURE ONE SOUTH PENN SQUARE, PHILADELPHIA, PA 19107 TEL: 215.636.9999 FAX: 215.636.9989 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: Sandy Smith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 9:46 AM To: William H. Magill Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [UC] South Street Bridge On Thursday, February 5, 2004, at 09:41 PM, William H. Magill wrote: > On 05 Feb, 2004, at 09:56, Dubin, Elisabeth wrote: >> What are the chances that when they eventually rebuild the bridge, >> that the onramps to the expressway would be reconfigured? I have >> only been in Philadelphia for about four years, but one of the first >> things I noticed about driving around here is that those onramps are >> BAD, both north and south. > > Very little. > > I believe that the Bridge is "owned" by the city, not PENN-DOT. Right you are, but I believe PennDOT is involved in the replacement project. > That also ignores the fact that there is a railroad and a river in the > way. > > The only "rational" solution is to eliminate those ramps completely -- > you will notice that the EXIT ramp from the Expressway to South/Spruce > Street, both north and South bound is from the high-speed, ie the > Left-Hand, lane. But the politicians demanded that they be built. Your first sentence above has more to do with why the South Street ramps connect to the left lane than your last one. At the time the Schuylkill Expressway was built through Philadelphia (~1957), a traditional "diamond" interchange with ramps angling out from the outer lanes took up more land than a center-of-the-highway interchange (the "single point urban interchange," in which ramps connect to the outer lanes of the freeway but converge at a single intersection in the middle on the cross street, had not yet been invented). Since the Schuylkill was being threaded through such a narrow strip of land at this point (the road actually lies partly over the riverbed and its northbound lanes are over water when the river is high), to build an interchange at South Street -- which I suspect Pennsylvania Department of Highways engineers wanted as much as any elected official did -- required a ramp design that took up as little space as possible. Hence the center ramps. -------Sandy Smith, Office of University Communications @ Penn-------- Managing Editor, _Penn Current_ / [EMAIL PROTECTED] 215.898.1423 / fax 215.898.1203 / http://pobox.upenn.edu/~smiths/ Got news? Got events? Got stories? Send ’em to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to the list named "UnivCity." To unsubscribe or for archive information, see <http://www.purple.com/list.html>. ---- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to the list named "UnivCity." To unsubscribe or for archive information, see <http://www.purple.com/list.html>.
