Low Bridge
A tour guide mistake I won’t make again!
There’s not much room for error at the Reading Railroad Bridge that crosses Spring Garden Street at 9th Street. And “Low Clearance” doesn’t give truck or bus drivers any specifics. Photo by Jim Murphy, author of “Real Philly History, Real Fast.”
I had my hands full — directing the bus driver to back up through this busy intersection … while cars were trying to make right turns onto Spring Garden Street from 9th Street. Kudos to the driver, who handled the situation beautifully. Photo by Jim Murphy
In the fall of 2023, I took a tour bus of out-of-town senior citizens around Old City and over Arch Street to the beautiful Ben Franklin Parkway and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Because these older tourists didn’t want to try climbing the Rocky Steps, we drove around the large George Washington Statue, then headed back down the Parkway towards Society Hill.
Traffic was unusually light that day. By the time we got back to the Bourse, it was much too early to go to lunch. And road closures and construction at the port area near Society Hill Towers made travel almost impossible there.
So, I decided to take the group over Spring Garden Street, then head up toward Fairmount Avenue and the Eastern State Penitentiary to show them Philadelphia’s most-copied building. “Some 300 prisons worldwide are based on the Penitentiary’s wagon-wheel, or ‘radial’ floor plan,” says Smithsonian Magazine.
Big mistake!
It’s not easy directing a bus while you’re telling people interesting nuggets of Philadelphia history. But it’s part of the job.
What I didn’t realize until too late was that the old Reading Railroad Bridge at Spring Garden Street and 9th Street doesn’t tell the bus driver how high the bridge is.
It simply says: “Low Clearance.”
So, the driver said, “I’ll go right here” and went north one block on 9th Street … where cars were parked all over, and the street was much too narrow to make a turn.
Bottom Line: we had to back down 9th Street all the way across busy Spring Garden Street.
I became a traffic director
Then I had to stop traffic three ways, signal the driver to back up across six or seven lanes of traffic, jump aboard and head back to Society Hill and the Bourse for lunch.
You better believe I will never again suggest that a bus driver go over Spring Garden Street. And I thanked our bus driver for doing a marvelous job under difficult conditions.
I also recently asked the Inquirer’s “Curious Philly” column to find out why there is no height footage listed at that bridge. “Low Clearance” doesn’t seem to be precise enough.
I also wonder how many other problem areas like this “Low Clearance” bridge still exist in Philadelphia. More than one, I’ll bet.
Source:
https://microsite.smithsonianmag.com/content/eastern-state/timeline.html