The swing bridge across the Schuylkill River has finally opened — and what a difference it makes!
At just 1,000 feet long (and it feels shorter, so that might even include the approaches), this bridge extends the Schuylkill River Trail further south, to Bartram’s Garden, a large city park. No more gritty streets strewn with glass or blocked by cars, just smooth blacktop with river views.
OK, the views across the Schuylkill are still gritty — this is an industrial part of Philadelphia, after all. But the ride is bliss.
We reached the river near Spruce Street and Schuylkill River Park. (You could start further upstream, such as near the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rocky Steps.) It’s a cold, gray day, but at least the rain has finally stopped. Not my favorite biking weather, but it’s the day of the ribbon-cutting for the new bridge, and we want to be there.
From the start, we get some of the Schuylkill River Trail’s most stunning architectural features: the boardwalk that puts us over the river, not beside it; the bridge-like Christian to Crescent section that also juts above the water that only opened last year. (I rode it then too.) And that’s just a few miles of riding.
Across the road, highway traffic is backed up. Sorry, not sorry.
Philadelphia’s skyline, the University of Pennsylvania and several hospitals are now behind us. We bike through the formerly cut-off Grays Ferry Crescent Park along the water and under the Grays Ferry Bridge. And there it is: the new swing bridge!
The long rectangular red truss-style box is in its open position, waiting for all the speeches ahead of the grand opening and keeping us off. This is such a big deal that hundreds of people have turned up for it despite the gloomy weather.
I’ll give the electeds their moment. This $28 million bridge for people on foot and on bicycles, built on a stone foundation that dates back to the early 1900s, replaces a railroad bridge that got stuck in the open position 42 years ago, cutting off a part of the city from its center. Now we gleefully watch the new bridge close and reconnect the two banks of the river.
Well done, Philadelphia!
It’s so crowded that we have to walk our bikes across the bridge. Then it’s less than a mile to the urban oasis of Bartram’s Garden.
We bike to the Float Lab, a bright yellow circular feature that will open next year and let you stand on the water. This looks so cool! My first thought: is it big enough for the crowds I expect it will attract?
The Schuylkill River Development Corp., a driving force behind this and other projects along Philadelphia’s portion of the much-longer Schuylkill River Trail, has more work to do. It must find a way from Bartram’s Garden to the mouth of the Schuylkill, at Fort Miflin, a Revolutionary War fort and site of a battle.
In the other direction, a new section of the SRT opened this summer in Pottstown, essentially completing the route to Reading. (OK, it’s still a little messy around the Wissahickon, but design work is happening now for a project there.) I’ve biked from Philadelphia to Reading before; time to do it again.
The new swing bridge is also great news for the East Coast Greenway, which uses the SRT to go from Center City through Bartram’s Garden onto John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge and onward toward Delaware and points south. (My experience doing that without this bridge is here.)
With this bridge, the SRT section that the Greenway uses is now complete. Now for the redesign of Spring Garden that will link the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers north of Center City.
I’m also patiently waiting for the construction of the Delaware Avenue extension project (Segment BS5 in a bigger I-95 project) that will connect two sections of trail along that river and be another big boost to the East Coast Greenway. The latest is that construction now will begin in 2029, not 2027 and wrap up in 2031.
But for now, once again, well done, Philly!
