In its eagerness to push through a flawed design, Philadelphia's Streets department is burning bridges with its residents.
With the planned reconstruction of the South Street Bridge, Philadelphia had the rare opportunity to develop a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly link between Penn's campus and Center City.
Instead, the Streets department has developed an ugly chute for funneling cars onto I-76 ramps, drawing a chorus of criticism from neighborhood groups, business associations and urban planners.
Their concerns are worthy of review. Rather than simply ignoring community feedback and spending $50 million on a flawed plan, city officials need to take off their blinders and consider redesigning the bridge to meet the community's needs.
The proposed design ignores the estimated 4,000 pedestrians and 1,000 bicycles that cross the bridge daily by narrowing sidewalks and eliminating guardrails that allow people to walk safely.
Worse, the city's design will turn the bridge into a high-speed freeway, exacerbating already dangerous merging situations between cars on the bridge's "death ramps."
As the Center City Residents Association pointed out last month, the new bridge would essentially be an extension of the Schuylkill Expressway rather than a pedestrian-friendly link between two neighborhoods.
In light of the fatal bridge collapse in Minneapolis, officials understandably want to rebuild South Street bridge as soon as possible, and engineers should shut down the current structure immediately should any safety issues arise.
But city officials shouldn't use safety as an excuse to rush through a poor design for a vital connection that will be around for the next 50 to 60 years. There's too much at stake to allow that to happen.
Philadelphia has one chance to get this project right.
