Inquirer Editorial: Less freeway, more Parkway

The planning and construction of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and its first major cultural institutions spanned about three decades. So it's not surprising that updating Philadelphia's version of the Champs-Élysées is taking more than a few years.

By the time the Parkway reaches its centenary in several years, however, the mile-long boulevard's worst flaws could be much more tolerable, thanks to the latest in a series of city improvement initiatives.

The challenge, as it has been for decades, is to tame the Parkway's multiple lanes of often high-speed traffic, which pose dire risks to pedestrians and bicyclists alike. And beyond making the Parkway safer, more work is needed to give visitors reasons to stroll through what is potentially a 65-acre park.

The promising plan dubbed "More Park, Less Way," announced this week by Mayor Nutter and city parks chief Michael DiBerardinis, could make progress on both fronts. Drafted by the University of Pennsylvania School of Design's PennPraxis, it calls for further developing a ribbon of small parks along the Parkway - green spaces that would be more integrated with the surrounding neighborhoods. They might also include more cafés and public toilets. And in time, the city hopes to schedule regular Parkway entertainment, exercise classes, and the like to attract more park users.

In addition to these smart moves, it would make sense to improve the pedestrian crossings near the Art Museum and to deliver on the mayor's goal of reclaiming nearby Eakins Oval as a park rather than a parking lot.

The price tag on Nutter's plan is still being worked out. But DiBerardinis cautions that it won't approach the $20 million spent in recent years on the street and sidewalk improvements that made Logan Square more inviting, as well as the addition of pocket parks, two cafés, and extended bike lanes along much of the Parkway.

DiBerardinis says that doesn't mean Nutter is thinking small - only that he is being savvy by putting forth a plan that might actually get done. The parks chief contends that the strategy "could be transformative if we can bring the neighborhoods to the Parkway, and the Parkway to the neighborhoods."

With a goal of completing the work by the end of 2015, when Nutter is set to leave office, there's a sense of both urgency and optimism that these next moves to improve the Parkway won't languish on the drawing board. That will depend partly on funding - in city capital dollars pledged by the mayor as well as foundation support, of which this initiative is clearly worthy.

Especially given the new vitality lent by the opening of the new Barnes Foundation and the renovation of Sister Cities Park, the city has every reason to keep trying to build a better Parkway.