Proposed 6 square block underground parking garage

[Jayfar]

This just popped up again on the new City Planning Commission blog Philadelphia Planetto. I had seen this illustration long ago, but hadn't been able to find it again until now. As part of the formerly-proposed Crosstown Expressway, we would have had a 6 square block underground parking garage, spanning 13th to 15th Streets, from Spruce to South St. Ugh!!!

http://philadelphiaplaneto.com/

Thank Goodness This NEVER Happened: The Crosstown Expressway | Philadelphia Planeto

[mixiboi]

Wow...that would have been crazy....but it's nice to see they showed the broad street line there making it look very important to the plan.

[OffenseTaken]

This just popped up again on the new City Planning Commission blog Philadelphia Planetto. I had seen this illustration long ago, but hadn't been able to find it again until now. As part of the formerly-proposed Crosstown Expressway, we would have had a 6 square block underground parking garage, spanning 13th to 15th Streets, from Spruce to South St. Ugh!!!

http://philadelphiaplaneto.com/ [homepage already borken, but inside links to the site work]

Thank Goodness This NEVER Happened: The Crosstown Expressway | Philadelphia Planeto

The most evil part of the plan was for City Hall to launch into space, while shooting death rays at random street corners like Broad and Spruce.

[ArcticSplash]

This proposal would have been OK (the Crosstown Expwy) had it not for the fact that it was going to be yet another open-cut nightmare like the Vine Street Expressway, with the streets being replaced with flyover caps.

Had the proposal been to bury the monster way further below ground... say to bedrock, and offer very minimal disruption to the street grid (a couple of City blocks obliterated to make way for tunnel ramps, ala the block bordered by Vine, Callowhill, Broad and 15th) limit it with a couple of ramps shooting out to Grays Ferry, Broad and another one at Moyamensing, it wouldn't have been so bad.

The added nuttiness was that the proposal kept focusing on South Street's demolition. It could have been accomplished underneath Washington Avenue with entrance ramps mid-block in spots and exit shooter ramps using wind-backs, not that dissimilar from how the Holland Tunnel works in NYC.


The original idea for the Expressway was to demolish all of South Street and have it run along the surface, "hemming in" Center City on all sides with freeways like most other CBDs are in the US, with basically a big trench that would start at the south end of South Street and end at the south side of Washington Avenue, reproducing the same look/feel of the VSE.

I-76E wound up being the replacement for this thing and it sees relatively little use compared to the Vine, 95, etc.

[eldondre]

Demolishing six blocks for parking would have been a terrible idea. Nobody proposed Washington Ave because it wasn't where people wanted to go. A deep tunnel.would have to deal with water table issues and would have likely been prohibitively expensive. In the end things worked out for the best in this case.

[radiocolin]

This is the most interesting portion of this proposal to me. The Embarcadero Freeway proposal in SF had a similar setup: large parking garages connected directly to the highway. You'd pull off, park, take an elevator down, and hop on transit. I assume these garages would work the same way with the Broad Street Line.

Imagine some large parking structures that connected to say, the Spring Garden El stop off 95, or the blocks around the ramps at Broad and Vine that would connect you to the BSL.

Drive in, park right off the highway, get on transit.

[y.lama]

Demolishing six blocks for parking would have been a terrible idea. Nobody proposed Washington Ave because it wasn't where people wanted to go. A deep tunnel.would have to deal with water table issues and would have likely been prohibitively expensive. In the end things worked out for the best in this case.

I think Washington Ave may have been considered to some degree
Crosstown Expressway (I-695, unbuilt)

but to you're point about where people want to go is the answer to ArticSplash's point about 76E having light traffic (bw WWB and Passyunk)

[y.lama]

This is the most interesting portion of this proposal to me. The Embarcadero Freeway proposal in SF had a similar setup: large parking garages connected directly to the highway. You'd pull off, park, take an elevator down, and hop on transit. I assume these garages would work the same way with the Broad Street Line.

Imagine some large parking structures that connected to say, the Spring Garden El stop off 95, or the blocks around the ramps at Broad and Vine that would connect you to the BSL.

Drive in, park right off the highway, get on transit.

people on this board (Eldondre and Desolate I believe) have noted that this idea could work well at the Stadiums

[eldondre]

people on this board (Eldondre and Desolate I believe) have noted that this idea could work well at the Stadiums

yep. Pittsburgh has actually implemented something like this with it's north shore connector. in fact, the owner of the parking garage that sits atop the station pays to have access to the line free with the idea that he will get more people parking (I understand it's working). the spring garden bsl stop might also work...especially if there were a garage on top of the highway itself. desolate once advocated a similar setup, I believe, for using the cynwyd line and a parkn ride off 76 there.
interesting stuff on that site, washington ave with an elevated expressway? would the Italian market have survived or been razed? more patrons if there were underground parking? also sounds like south st was to be just like vine st rather than elevated. in the long run, I'm not sure how much was actually to be gained versus other types of investment (such as improving the rail lines to bethlehem and reading). it seems likely whatever demolition took place would have remained until now.

[ArcticSplash]

I don't think there was ever any serious consideration to make any of the Crosstown elevated. That would have spread the discontent even further from South and Lombard than it would have. It was going to be surface at first and then when Rizzo came around, PCPC tried the underground approach with pylons supporting mid-rise and higher housing on top. Not that dissimilar from how NYC put pylons to erect buildings on top of the East Side freeway.

[NYC to Philly]

I don't think there was ever any serious consideration to make any of the Crosstown elevated. That would have spread the discontent even further from South and Lombard than it would have. It was going to be surface at first and then when Rizzo came around, PCPC tried the underground approach with pylons supporting mid-rise and higher housing on top. Not that dissimilar from how NYC put pylons to erect buildings on top of the East Side freeway.

You mean FDR Drive in Manhattan; there are no highways in NYC (probably the shole state that are called freeways.

[szekely]

Aren't self-driving cars going to make most parking garages unnecessary?

[OffenseTaken]

Aren't self-driving cars going to make most parking garages unnecessary?

Aren't the internets going to make most cars unnecessary?

[thoth]

I don't think there was ever any serious consideration to make any of the Crosstown elevated. That would have spread the discontent even further from South and Lombard than it would have. It was going to be surface at first and then when Rizzo came around, PCPC tried the underground approach with pylons supporting mid-rise and higher housing on top. Not that dissimilar from how NYC put pylons to erect buildings on top of the East Side freeway.

"Soon after this approval, engineering consultants Wilbur Smith and Associates prepared a route planning report for the Pennsylvania Department of Highways and the Philadelphia City Planning Commission. The following routes were considered:

Double-decked, elevated highway along the Washington Avenue corridor
Depressed highway along the Lombard Street-South Street corridor
Depressed highway along the South Street-Bainbridge Street corridor"

So yeah, they actually considered running a double stacked elevated highway down Washington. Some of these old time planners came up with these plans like they were playing SimCity or something. Crazy.

Just a reminder to everybody, up to at least 1985 the official DVRPC highway plans for the city looked like this:

http://www.phillyroads.com/history/e..._1966/img4.gif

Girard would have been depressed, most of the others (Cobb's Creek, 52nd Street) would have been surface level highways, kind of like the Boulevard, I think. Still not sure why no one has pushed harder for 676 to be capped and greened.

Closer to the topic at hand: I know people already who drive to, say, the Girard El station area, easily park for free and ride the train into Center City. I think it's a great idea to formalize the relationship between driving and public transit. Parking issues and costs in Center City still deter people from coming into the core.