Weaving together Penn's campus

The closure of the South Street Bridge threw a wrench into the daily routines of many Penn athletes. But with the new Weave Pedestrian Bridge, they will now make it to practice on time.

The bridge - which opened to the public on Jan. 19 and is part of the Penn Connects initiative - spans from the Amtrak Northeast Corridor train lines to Hollenback Center and the athletic fields to the south.

Mark Kocent, principal planner at the Office of the University Architect, wrote in an e-mail that the bridge will help connect Penn's campus to new and current athletic facilities, the Schuylkill Park and Center City.

"The bridge is well used daily by students and staff in the Navy ROTC program and by student athletes and coaches, all of whom need access to Hollenback Center," Kocent wrote.

He added that so far, the bridge spans over the train tracks and the western ramp wraps around Bower Field. It will be replaced by a new access path as part of the future Penn Park, another Penn Connects project.

College freshman Adrienne Lerner, a member of Penn's varsity soccer team, said she thought the bridge might be rickety from the way it was originally described to her, but found it to be "really nice."

Lerner used the Weave Bridge for the first time yesterday and explained that she began on the back side of Franklin Field along a long ramp. She then went down a wooden ramp and then onto a marked-off pavement area through the construction site in order to reach Hollenback Center.

Using this method, her journey to Hollenback took 20 minutes instead of the 30 to 35 minutes it would have taken via a back route on Baltimore Avenue, which was "way too long," she said.

Members of the baseball team drive to practice every day because it is still too far to walk, Lerner added.

Lerner and College junior Tom Jackson, a member of the lacrosse team, said their coaches explained the pedestrian bridge to them when they arrived on campus after winter break.

The lacrosse team has used the new bridge to reach the weight room at Hollenback Center every Monday and Wednesday since it opened, Jackson said.

He added that the walk takes an extra five minutes and is useful because he is "not really aware of another way to get to [the Hollenback Center] other than the pedestrian bridge."

"The bridge is designed to be fully accessible for ADA use, jogging, bikes and small vehicles such as golf carts," Kocent wrote, though he added that the Division of Public Safety has suggested that bikes should be walked on the temporary ramps.

The bridge, designed by Cecil Balmond and his London-based firm Arup, was engineered by Philadelphia-based Ammann & Whitney.

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