CROSS-COUNTRY
701
commence
for
begin.
One wonders why it was not written, "The city
has decided to begin work on the following territories..
" But
nothing in Philadelphia is as simple as that.
For decisions have been made before and work has begun before.
When the Delaware River bridge was built in the early twenties
Philadelphia made a bargain with Camden at the other end. Each
was to improve its own approaches to the bridge. Camden, one fifteenth
the size of its neighbor, kept its word long ago, but Philadelphia has
never managed to do the same. How long ago was the project for
removing the "Chinese Wall' decided upon? The Chinese Wall is an
ugly escarpment that runs along a considerable stretch of Market Street,
the city's busiest, allowing PRR trains to run overground to Broad
Street. Tunnels bored through it for cross-town traffic are dank, dark
and slimy, favorite spots for mugging. Still the escarpment stands, the
central city's most prominent eyesore. At one time Philadelphia was to
have a modern, high speed subway system-the "Els" meandering for
mile upon mile between West Philadelphia and Frankford were to
come down ; Locust Street was to have a subway. Six million dollars
was invested in digging, five years of work, then abrupt abandonment.
No one now ever expects the tracks of even that one subway to be
laid, the trains to run.
Nevertheless the planners carryon, and perhaps their quiet per–
severance is one of the few remaining remnants of the Quaker Spirit
which once hovered over William Penn's country town. The express
highways to eliminate transportation bottlenecks have not been started,
but "plans are being considered." There is a nice plan for suitably
enshrining the clump of historic buildings (Independence Hall,
et al.)
on lower Chestnut Street, next to the plant of the Curtis Publishing
Company, in what is to be known as Independence Mall. This plan
ties in with the bridge approach improvement, and it is ready.
An–
other is for air pollution control-the fine soft coal soot mingling with
the dampish air gives Philadelphia a distinctly regional weather, too
hot and muggy in summer, wet and cold in winter. The sinuses become
troubled. There is the sorely needed one for improving the garbage
collections, and yes, that old hardy perennial for negating the most
notorious of its evils, the drinking water. This turned bad over fifty
years ago, and while it no longer kills people, one of the planning
reports did notice that "during the year a period of unusually bad
taste in the city water brought a number of queries . . . as to the
status of the water program."
The manufacturing plants that line the Delaware and Schuylkill
