Ben Franklin Bridge - abandoned/never used trolley line

[hop208]

They'll probably have to finish it eventually out of necessity.

[filbruce1]

somebody sell the space to westfields

[PmMidnight]

Lavar Burton?

[DoubleDee39]

I THINK IT WOULD BE A GREAT IDEA IF THEY DID FINISH THAT PROJECT!! I BET MANY PEOPLE WOULD RIDE IT, JUST LIKE A SUBWAY! ESPECIALLY WITH THE PRICES OF GAS NOW!

[MrMuddshovel]

at 3.25 what is that ?

[murcuryvapor]

I love stuff like this. Thanks!

[cfreak99]

wow. very interesting video. Just the schematics from the begining was amazing to see. I so love street-secrets

[masluxx]

volume is way too low i can not hear it

[thelammantor]

ive takin tha line its pretty to rid ovr tha bridge on a clean car and on a nice day :)

[tryithere]

Nice video but that has to be the stupidest statue I've ever seen.

[Gaeilgeoir]

It's kind of a shame they didn't open the bridge up to pedestrians, like the Golden Gate.

[Deadkittens22]

@Gaeilgeoir It is open, I walked it last week.

[Gaeilgeoir]

@Deadkittens22 WOW! Really?? :D

[Pickinbuddy]

If that was in New York City--they would've made it into 1 million dollar condos...

[kittyliter008]

unbelievable, always wondered about this

[irishbeliever]

This is a good example of urban sprawl

[RCAvhstape]

Back when I was in high school my cross country coach used one practice each season for us to run across this bridge from Camden to Philly and back. Really cool.

[mpjrdldn]

I drive underneath this beautiful bridge when taking my daughter to the supermarket.  It is a beautiful, blue bridge. My cousin takes PATCO from Jersey to Center City every day.

[hootinouts]

This excellent! I've always wanted to see the inside of this bridge and now I have. What an engineering masterpiece.

[linowilly]

it goes from Philly to Camden; so it goes from no where to nowhere right?

[WhollyGhost]

From no where to nowhere to now here.

[DavisCampbell]

@WhollyGhost cool eh.?

[mpjrdldn]

I think the omission of mass transportation from the plans for the Post-WWII Long Island Expressway was another turning point. The engineers involved begged the man in charge, Robert Moses, to include public transportation but he "hated it". Perhaps he was paid to "hate it"?

[hootinouts]

Probably true about Robert Moses. There was a privately funded Subway built in NYC during Boss Tweed's reign but it had to be dug and constructed in secret as Tweet would have squashed it.

[mpjrdldn]

Boss Tweed's secret subway - what a story! Can you imagine digging a subway in secret?

[mpjrdldn]

I think I saw this wonderful documentary when it first aired. Does this include the trolleys people could rent for funerals?

[jsh4drum]

very cool

[TVwriter23]

black people had the NAACP, but that didn't stop ignorance. It's changing mindsets (people chaning their own mind) not government mandated programs. They might help enforcing something, but mindsets changing is what really brings change.

[TVwriter23]

You have to remember this was a different time. They didn't have buses etc. that catered to disabled people.

[hesten303]

Looks very awsome,

[njsocagyal]

This video was absolutely fascinating, thank you so much for posting.

[WhollyGhost]

You're very welcome!

[dpjaexp]

Nobody 'wanted to ride buses', as this man stated. The fact is, there were forces within Big Auto and Big Oil at that point - chiefly Ford and GM - who didn't want transit to be a part of the equation on bridges like the Ben Franklin. They had allies in government who worked with them to quash the expansion of transit. Then the Great Depression hit and that put paid to many projects. If transit had been incorporated into the span, millions more trips would be made over it, in half the time.

[hootinouts]

So true. In fact; the exodus out of the cites and into the suburbs has further ruined public transit.  Out in the "burbs" they segregate residential, commercial and industrial areas from each other so that we are all forced to commute by private transportation.

[pigenital]

@dpjaexp It's slightly more complicated, in that clean new buses were replacing dirty old streetcars. So people did want to ride buses, but it was because of the decisions of the transit companies to buy buses rather than streetcars. The PCC streetcars that run on Route 15 were an attempt to stem the tide in the 1930s by designing a modern streetcar.

[dvd215]

Whats the name of this special

[WhollyGhost]

"Secrets Beneath The Streets"

[DonOwnsYou]

Thank you for posting these WHYY specials on Philadelphia, I saw this show a few years ago and enjoyed it.

:)

[Klendathue]

I saw the last part of this on WHYY and had always wished that I had not missed the beginning. Thanks WhollyGhost for posting it.

[njriverman]

Very Kool, my mom and grandmom walked over it opening day in 1926. I plan to do that in 2026, with my kids and who knows maybe grandkids. More at pennjersey dot info

[WhollyGhost]

That's awesome! Let's hope that our world is still here in 2026!

[TheWetRabbit]

An abandoned station on the PATCO hi-speed line which connect Philly to south jersey is VERY close near this location. (The former Franklin Square station which was last open in 1979). That line uses the bridge to make the crossover to Camden NJ.

[nhoverhaulinfan2]

Nice video, they should open the cave area and walkways

[dingorex]

Reminds me of that place near the city we visited on or about 1970-1998 or thereabouts to some certainty wow what an almost like adventure with those thing there cannot be expressed written-like you know wow what a thing.

[knsummers]

awesome - mr.rogers meets squatters. reminds me of teenage mutant ninja turtles II