PennDot could keep I-95 from bigfooting Philadelphia by supporting transit

Scrolling through PennDot’s preliminary proposal for reconstructing I-95 in South Philadelphia is like entering a time warp. We’re back in the 1950s when moving traffic quickly was the top priority, urban neighborhoods were expendable, transit was considered passé, and no one worried that climate change was frying the planet.

This particular stretch of I-95, which runs between the Ben Franklin and Walt Whitman Bridges, was rammed through South Philadelphia’s rowhouse neighborhoods more than half a century ago, during an era when such views dominated our national thinking. Now the concrete structure is coming to the end of its useful life, and PennDot says the entire roadway must be replaced.

So, fine, rebuild I-95 — as is.

While we wouldn’t design a highway in this form or location today, the road is there now and provides a useful link between Bucks County and the Philadelphia airport. The problem is that PennDot is talking about building the highway back bigger. PennDot says its projections show congestion will increase over the next 20 years. The only way to handle the growing volumes safely, the agency insists, is by adding lanes, ramps, and wider shoulders.

Actually, there is another, more climate-friendly solution, one that has been glaringly absent in PennDot’s community forums: more transit.

Ever since PennDot started rebuilding the Philadelphia portions of I-95 more than a decade ago, it has approached the undertaking purely as a highway project. But given the increasing urgency of climate change, PennDot needs to take a broader view and start thinking of I-95 as just one piece in the region’s transportation network.

Let’s say PennDot is correct that congestion will increase over the next 20 years (an assumption some planners dispute). That doesn’t mean the agency has to accommodate demand by building ever-bigger highways — especially when those highways would bigfoot fragile rowhouse neighborhoods. Instead, PennDot should be looking for ways to pull drivers off I-95 and get them on transit.

Of course, Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled legislature has just made that goal much harder by holding up a deal to fully fund SEPTA. As a result of the stalemate, the transit agency says it may have to slash service and increase fares to close a yawning budget gap. There is even talk of shrinking the system, which currently serves 700,000 riders a day. The Chestnut Hill West rail line could be eliminated.

This crisis comes just as SEPTA is making real progress to improve service and win back riders lost during the pandemic. In the next few years, it will replace its outdated subway cars on the Market-Frankford Line, modernize its trolley lines, and reorganize its bus routes. By undermining SEPTA, the legislative majority effectively forces people to drive and makes it harder for Pennsylvania to reduce its carbon emissions.

The irony is, Americans are already signaling they want to drive less. Since computers and smartphones entered our lives, people no longer use their cars for many daily tasks, such as picking up drug prescriptions, according to Brian D. Taylor, an urban planning professor at UCLA, who is preparing to publish a major analysis of traffic data with colleagues from Clemson University. Car usage for commuting has also fallen in tandem with the increase in remote work, a recent MIT study found. In the Philadelphia region, roughly 18% of workers have stopped going into the office.

At the same time, we’re definitely seeing a surge in truck traffic, partly to support the increase in online shopping, according to Ariella Maron, who oversees the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission. As a result, she says, the overall number of “vehicle miles traveled” on I-95 is growing.

Many of those trucks are headed to Philadelphia’s port, airport and the fulfillment centers like the ones planned at the Bellwether District, the former refinery site. These economic hubs are vital to Philadelphia’s economy. But we wouldn’t need to widen I-95 to make room for that new truck traffic if motorists had better transit options.

Assuming that Gov. Josh Shapiro secures a deal with the legislature to fund SEPTA, what are some of the transit projects that could convince people to leave their cars at home?

Here’s a relatively easy one: Since many drivers are using I-95 to access the airport, how about increasing service on SEPTA’s airport line? Few cities are lucky to have such a quick and convenient service connecting their downtowns to their airports. Unfortunately, SEPTA’s airport train runs only twice an hour. Imagine how popular this service would be if trains left every 15 minutes (and if you could check your bags at the train station).

In fact, SEPTA is trying to figure out the logistics right now. To double airport service, SEPTA would need to eliminate conflicts with freight trains, which share the tracks. While creating separate tracks would need to be funded by the state or federal government, the cost would be significantly less than adding ramps to I-95. Perhaps Pennsylvania could copy Colorado, which has been diverting funds from highway projects to pay for transit alternatives.

Another way to lure people off I-95 would be to extend the Broad Street subway to the Navy Yard. This project has been on the city’s wish list since the early 2000s, when the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. acquired the site from the federal government. Right now, the Broad Street line terminates at the sports complex, which means Navy Yard commuters need to switch to a bus for the final leg of the trip.

The expense of building the mile-long extension was hard to justify 20 years ago, but today it makes a lot more sense. The Navy Yard is now one of the biggest job centers in the Philadelphia region, with 17,000 employees. Not only are the Navy Yard’s streets lined with offices, hotels, medical offices, and biotech companies, its lead developer — Ensemble/Mosaic — will soon complete the yard’s first residential project, a 614-unit, mixed-use complex that includes 92 units of affordable housing.

The payback for building the extension would be enormous. The streamlined connection would spur the construction of thousands of housing units, creating an entirely new neighborhood. And because the Navy Yard is publicly owned, every new apartment building must include a hefty number of affordable units.

Delaware Avenue is another place where transit access can be improved. Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler, whose South Philadelphia district would be severely impacted by the reconstruction, has been pressing PennDot to reconsider its initial proposals. Since I-95 runs parallel to Delaware Avenue for its entire length, she has urged the agency to explore new light rail or express bus service as an alternative to widening the highway.

This is really a no-brainer. A new line along the waterfront boulevard could connect all the emerging South Philadelphia job hubs: PhilaPort, Bellwether District, Navy Yard, and the airport. “I’d like to see a broader vision for this whole area,” Fiedler told me. “It’s so focused on cars as the only form of transportation.”

Not all the transit improvements need to be in South Philadelphia to help divert traffic from I-95. Little things, like raising the platform at the Cornwells Heights regional rail station in Bensalem, will make taking the train more appealing, Maron noted. That project was just funded with money from the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill.

Improving transit options in Northeast Philadelphia and Lower Bucks would also make a huge difference. Because there are so few lines, residents there are particularly dependent on I-95. But a new proposal to build a subway on Roosevelt Boulevard would create an attractive alternative, while providing easy transfers to the Market-Frankford and Broad Street lines.

Ironically, plans for a Roosevelt Boulevard subway were first proposed in 1913, and then revived in the ‘60s, right around the time I-95 was being built. But it didn’t find a champion until Jay Arzu, a University of Pennsylvania doctoral student in urban planning, started talking up the project in 2022.

Arzu, who is writing his dissertation on the project, has already succeeded in winning over local residents and community leaders, and now SEPTA seems to be warming to the proposal. According to his estimates, the 12-mile subway could attract 125,000 riders a day and help create a constellation of dense, transit-oriented development nodes along Roosevelt Boulevard.

In Arzu’s view, PennDot’s single-minded focus on highways like I-95 has gobbled up the bulk of the federal transportation funds allocated to Pennsylvania and kept Philadelphia from investing in its transit system. “Our region has been shooting itself in the foot since the ‘90s. The only thing PennDot has done is widen I-95,” he argues. “It has prioritized cars, not communities.”

If we’ve learned anything since I-95 was first constructed, we can’t build our way out of traffic congestion. Maron told me that jams on the northern section, which reopened in 2022 after an extensive reconstruction, “are worse than ever.”

Adding highway capacity means more cars, and more cars mean more carbon emissions, more pollution and higher asthma rates. The new version of I-95 will almost certainly require a wider structure. To make room for that extra girth, PennDot will probably have to demolish two popular recreation facilities — the Bigler ball fields run by the Southeast Youth Athletic Association, and the Rizzo Rink, a city-owned skating rink.

Why would we keep destroying our city and our planet when we know how to create better and greener ways for people to get around?