The Schuylkill Expressway (“Surekill”)
It’s 12:29 AM and I’m a bit groggy but simultaneously overstimulated from that Gorillaz concert. I’m blown away. What an amazing show. It was eyeball cocaine and sounded pretty great too! But that’s not the point of this post. In this I want to make the first of a series of posts on the topic of cars and discuss the school of car-crazies our American society has become. I am going to start this class with a quick review of the Schuylkill Expressway.
The Schuylkill Expressway gets its name from the oft adjacent river of the same name that was a lifeblood artery to Philadelphia from Tuscarora and branches to many other towns hours from the city on a horse (or days on the Expressway). The river once carried millions of tons of both coal and steel from the many small manufacturing towns upriver when Central PA was an industrial mecca. Now the river quietly heads from the Poconos and meanders through the Appalachian foothills of Southeastern Pennsylvania before emptying her contents into the Delaware River with the occasional kayak or crew team to break the surface tension. There was a whole toxic pollution/sludge thing that happened in between but we don’t have time for that today so I’m going to leave that history whitewashed for now and move on.
The Schuylkill Expressway begins at the convergence of 422 (The Ben Franklin Expressway), US-202 (for locals that would be the route from KOP to West Chester), and I-76 (the infamous main east/west artery of the Pennsylvania Turnpike running from Philly to Pittsburgh) just south of King of Prussia. It ends just east of Philadelphia crossing the Delaware River into New Jersey. From Wikipedia, “locally known as “the Schuylkill”, is a two- to-eight lane freeway through southern Montgomery County and the city of Philadelphia in Philadelphia County.” The 8 lane portions exist for the westernmost 15 yards and the eastern section starting near Belmont (basically northeast downtown) which constitutes the final 4 miles.
The entire Schuylkill Expressway is 25.2 miles long. No one has ever successfully traveled from one end to the other as it takes longer than one lifetime and the cryogenic suspension technology is not yet available that would allow one to do so using suspended animation. No matter what time of day you get on the Schuylkill you will encounter a traffic jam. The causes for this are many. The first is this highway serving a city of 6 million people using 2 lanes in each direction. The second is this highway being an artery for over the road trucks to traverse the state of PA from east to west and into New Jersey. The third is the fact that once of the most constricted 7 mile sections has no entrances or exits. When there is an accident there is no way to relieve the congestion. The fourth is the accidents.
There is an accident on the Schuylkill every second of every day. When you register to vote here you are also entered in a rotation whereby you must cause an accident when notified of your name being drawn. Penndot draws names daily and notifies you using the Driver Alert System. Once an accident of sufficient severity has occurred to require emergency services they come using the shoulder. However, multiple people having suffered years on this freeway become unhinged and pull to the shoulder to attempt bypassing the accident at 90 miles per hour…on the shoulder. When they inevitably also wreck this requires emergency services to respond to the new accident which causes more delays and additional shoulder-jerk accidents. Meanwhile new emergency services are called in and attempt to reach the accident by driving up the highway in the wrong direction. Inexplicably they also dispatch in the opposing direction and upon reaching the incursion they block the other side and provide services over the median. As you see in the accident pic above this means we now have ALL traffic going any direction blocked.
The congestion only worsens as the western suburbs continue to develop. It is actually faster and easier to drive to Pittsburg to see their sports teams than attempting to get to downtown Philly from the burbs on the Schuylkill. Your other option to access downtown is taking the “Blue Route” south on I-495 to I-95. I-95 from Chester (the I-495/I-95 interchange) to Downtown allowed the Mad Max and the Road Warrior movies to save a ton on actors and set budgets by simply filming a regular day on that road and dropping Mel Gibson in the middle.
Rumor has it Pope Benedict XVI abdicated as the supreme Roman pontiff after driving on the Schuylkill and was screaming and shouting impure thoughts through the tiny hole in the plexiglass safety bubble. Apparently he attempted to run a Range Rover off the road when it grazed the Popemobile merging at zero inches clearance traveling at 160 miles per hour. The 7 mile section that is “the Bottleneck” section is not under the jurisdiction of any US law enforcement agency. It is a lawless hellscape where true Libertarian ideals can be seen playing out. Crimes committed in this section are not punished as no one knows who should enforce the laws or if the Constitution even applies. Scream all you want, no one is coming to help you.
I decided to write this post after sitting in traffic on the way to The Met to see Gorillaz. We left the house at 5 and travel time end to end was originally 1 hour 9 minutes. Once on the Schuylkill we encountered the requisite traffic jamb and Google revised our time (at that moment having traveled about halfway) from 31 minutes to 2 hours and 29 minutes. Eventually we broke through having lost one hour to travel 4 miles. As we broke through I noted the remaining journey: 12 miles and 37 minutes. That is so Philly I can’t even explain.
This country desperately needs regional rail networks and high speed intercity rail. Desperately. I could have taken the train. It would have meant a 30 minute drive, a 52 minute train ride, a 72 minute bus trip or a 49 minute subway trek, and a six block walk. And the last train would have left by the time I was able to get back for the return trip. We could do so much to reverse global warming if we really gave a shit. But instead we are going to attempt making the Schuylkill a double-decker highway. The project will be done in 90 years and during it the highway will be one lane. But we are car crazies and that’s what we do.
Beta Testing Adulthood 