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A person scaled the Benjamin Franklin Bridge over Labor Day weekend, according to reports and images on social media, going back and forth between Philadelphia and Camden before eventually descending and being detained by authorities.
Photos posted online show the climber almost casually strolling along the 30-inch cables that hold together what was, when it opened in 1926, the longest suspension bridge in the world.
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Why’d the climber go up? It may have been to distribute the ashes of a friend.
The Ben Franklin Bridge escapade started just before 6 p.m. Sunday, per traffic cam screenshots, and ended about 20 minutes later. Unconfirmed reports identified the climber as a male, and said he was taken into custody with no injuries.
Observers who watched the escapade via traffic cams focused on the area said once he made it to a summit — the bridge towers are 382 feet tall — he reached into his pocket, then made a gesture that looked like tossing out ashes.
Philly police didn’t have any related information, per Ofc. Miguel Torres, who referred a reporter to the Delaware River Port Authority. A person who answered the phone at the DRPA, the bi-state transportation agency that oversees the Ben Franklin Bridge, said they couldn’t provide any info or confirm the incident.
But photos of the climber showed up all over the internet.
Philadelphian Matt Dunphy, who refers to himself in his Twitter bio as a “citizen archaeologist,” posted a thread showing the progression of the person’s adventure there and on reddit, where several others weighed in, with one person noting they’d seen police activity on the bridge during this timeframe.
Back in 2017, two people were arrested at the top of the Ben Franklin Bridge after a stunt that shut down traffic for an hour and a half. Crews closed the roadway after reports of two men dressed in black and carrying backpacks, but it turned out they were photographers who make a hobby of capturing pics from high-risk angles, per 6ABC.
In this case, officers didn’t have to climb up in order to stop the trespasser.
But he reportedly didn’t come down right away. “He walked all the way to N.J..side, but cops were waiting for him, so he climbed back up!” one observer posted on Instagram, with a photo of the person looking tiny at the top of the mammoth structure.
“Looks like the ride’s over,” posted Dunphy, with an image of what looks like the person climbing back down.
The Ben Franklin Bridge is about 1.5 miles long, per the DRPA (7,456 feet from abutment to abutment, aka the points where the span leaves land and crosses over the water). It sits about 135 feet above the Delaware River, and about 38 million vehicles cross over it in an average year.
If you want to experience it up close, check out the pedestrian pathway — you can walk from Philly to South Jersey without ever leaving the safety of the pavement.
