Looking Ahead | Reaching the sky, clogging the ground

City officials seem to be giving the yellow light to development along the Schuylkill.

Traffic congestion along and near the expressway is a major concern for the city, the Philadelphia Planning Commission said in a meeting last Tuesday in discussing the planned $400 million Cira Centre South development.

The Commission ultimately approved the project, but with the requirement that Brandywine Realty Trust develop traffic studies showing how 5,000 Internal Revenue Service employees would get to work at the building, which is now home to the local branch of the U.S. Postal Service.

Despite the approval, the meeting displays the amount of work the city has ahead of it in preparing for the traffic implications of Penn's eastward expansion.

The complex, developed by Brandywine, will include a 30-story residential tower and a 40-story commercial building built on land leased from Penn between Walnut and Chestnut Streets and east of 30th Street.

Anthony Rimikis, senior vice president at Brandywine, said only half of the 2,400 spaces in the planned parking garage will be available for IRS staff, so most are expected to use public transportation.

He added that the project should have a beneficial impact on traffic in the area by eliminating postal truck traffic on surrounding streets.

For its own part, Penn will select a consultant in the next few months to study how expansion efforts may affect traffic congestion in the area, Facilities Vice President Anne Papageorge said.

In the meantime, she said, a planned one-way loop to manage traffic around the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine is currently in the approval process.

Results from the study, which will uses a simulation to analyze traffic data in the area, are set to be released in late spring; possible ways to address the issue could include changing traffic-light signalling or adding turn lanes.

While traffic studies may address short-term transit issues, Harris Steinberg, executive director of PennPraxis, said long-term solutions may prove challenging because of a "lack of coordinated growth and development strategies."

"The current administration has no department of transportation," he said. "It hasn't been a priority to create a comprehensive traffic and transportation plan and policy. Many hope that this will be a priority of the next administration."

Despite the focus on traffic-related issues, other problems, like how to revitalize pedestrian life in an area sliced in half by rail lines, continue to loom large.

"All this talk about connecting West Philadelphia with Center City is just rhetoric . unless developers fill in this gap," said Inga Saffron, architecture critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer. "Right now, the area is a no man's land and practically inhospitable to pedestrians."

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