The community group that runs South Street’s popular Triangle Plaza is a step closer to pushing through a multimillion-dollar traffic improvement plan for the area — if it can work out significant differences with residents of an adjoining neighborhood.
The state recently awarded the city a $1.6 million grant to help fund two related street improvement projects proposed by the South of South Neighborhood Association, or SOSNA. The total cost of the work is estimated at $3 million.
The uncontroversial part of the plan would make Triangle Plaza, a technically temporary public space at South and 23rd Street/Grays Ferry Avenue, into a permanent fixture. The city would expand the sidewalk to cover a stretch of asphalt that the lively plaza has occupied for nearly a decade, closing the gap between the sidewalk and a traffic island.
“It’s been an amazing success,” SOSNA board member Stephen Rodriguez said. “We’re hoping that this grant is just going to take it to the next level and make it really a more professionally curated and built space.”
The other part of the plan aims to tame heavy traffic and improve pedestrian safety by making changes around the complex, five-way intersection where Grays Ferry meets 23rd, 24th and Bainbridge streets. It would divide the junction into two smaller intersections, and reverse traffic flow on three blocks of 24th Street.
That last element, reversing the street’s direction, faces stout opposition in Fitler Square, a small neighborhood just to the northwest that could see a significant increase in daily peak-hour traffic if the plan goes forward.
“We’d really like to see this thought out very carefully, with an acknowledgement that when traffic gets pushed off of one road, it moves elsewhere,” said Ben Keys, president of the Fitler Square Neighborhood Association. “How do we best balance some of those trade-offs?”
A “wildly popular” reclaimed public space
Since at least 2005 SOSNA and other groups have been working to improve Grays Ferry Avenue’s two “triangle” intersections at South and Bainbridge streets, to make them friendlier to pedestrians and more welcoming gateways to the South Street West commercial corridor.
Triangle Plaza dates to 2013, during a period when city officials were trying to make it easier for community groups to create new public plazas, parklets and bike corrals by closing off parking spots or sections of street to cars.
After then-Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson gave the plan his blessing, SOSNA closed off the very northern tip of Grays Ferry Avenue, a short slip lane that angles from 23rd to South Street. It blocked the road with barriers, planters, and later an Indego bike rack, fixed up an existing fountain, and added lighting, furniture, and other amenities.
The site immediately became a “wildly popular” hangout spot, Rodriguez said.
In good weather, dozens of people lounge in the plaza, making it by far the most popular public gathering place in the area, in part because of the available seating, he said.
Volunteers maintain the space and organize a steady schedule of events, including a Thursday Night Music series with local bands, vendor markets, and SOSNA’s annual Plazapalooza festival. It’s become a critical asset for Grace Tavern, The Igloo ice cream shop, and other adjoining shops, Rodriguez said.
“Girl Scout troops meet there, birthday parties are held there. There’s just a laundry list of smaller groups that use that space,” he said. “The businesses that are on that plaza directly benefit, heavily. It’s actually what sort of kept them business, particularly during COVID when the outdoor space was at such a premium.”
The plaza is now in its third three-year pilot permit, according to a SOSNA project description provided by the state Department of Community and Economic Development, which announced the $1.6 million grant last month.
The plan proposed by SOSNA and the Streets Department would make it permanent by installing concrete where there’s now asphalt and uniting the sidewalk with the existing traffic island.
Triangle Plaza was the first plaza in Center City that fully repurposed a street by closing it to cars, according to SOSNA. It has since served as an inspiration to other community groups who often struggle with the city’s complicated processes for authorizing pedestrian plazas, parklets, and streeteries on roads or other publicly owned land.
Reversing flow to fix the grid
Meanwhile, a block to the southwest, the intersection of Grays Ferry and Bainbridge has another pair of road triangles. It’s the spot where southbound 23rd Street shifts west to fit into an altered, wider block pattern, and where southbound 24th merges into Grays Ferry and disappears for a few blocks.
The overall effect is to create a “weird” wide intersection along Bainbridge with five or six entries and exits, depending on how you count them, and an awkward flow of vehicles and pedestrians who struggle with conflicting traffic signals, Rodriguez said.
In addition, the “oddity” of both 23rd and 24th running south in that area means drivers coming up Grays Ferry Avenue can’t simply continue north on their way to Lombard Street, the South Street bridge, I-76, and West Philadelphia, he said. They’re forced to turn right on Bainbridge, and then they usually turn left up 22nd to reach Lombard.
That creates a “horrendous bottleneck” at the intersection during peak travel times, along with congestion on the residential streets to the south as far as Washington Avenue, he said. It also results in heavy car, bus, and truck traffic on the residential block of Bainbridge between 23rd and 22nd, according to SOSNA.
The spot is “quite frankly, a death trap,” Rodriguez said. “There’s accidents there all the time. We’ve had gazillions of misses — and hits on pedestrians there.”
SOSNA had a traffic engineer analyze the situation, and the group came up with a proposal to fix it. It calls for building two large sidewalk bumpouts on Greys Ferry on the north and side sides of the intersection. They’d be similar to the proposed Triangle Plaza expansion.
The bumpouts would break up the straight line of the road, narrow crossing distances for pedestrians, and turn Bainbridge’s intersections at 23rd and 24th into two separate, typical right-angle junctions.
Drivers coming up Grays Ferry would no longer be strictly routed to turn right on Bainbridge, reducing traffic there. Instead they’d be allowed to continue up 24th Street, which would be switched to a northbound traffic flow for about three blocks, past South and Naudain streets and up to Lombard.
“It’s a fairly easy fix,” Rodriguez said. “All you have to do is reverse three blocks south to north and create a standard Philly grid.”
A laundry list of objections
However, the prospect of shifting northbound rush hour traffic from busy, two-laned 22nd Street to quieter 24th Street has raised alarms in the Fitler Square area. Keys, of the Fitler Square Neighborhood Association (FSNA), said a survey of nearby residents found them overwhelmingly opposed.
“The issue here is trading quiet blocks of Bainbridge for quiet blocks of 24th and Naudain,” he said. “This is one where there isn’t a policy solution that helps all parties.”
He noted that, if the changes go ahead, traffic will be entering the intersection of 24th and Lombard from three directions instead of two. That would create a new bottleneck area, and new problems for adjacent businesses and for The Philadelphia School at 25th and Lombard, he said.
Some drivers will also inevitably try to take a shortcut through Naudain, a small residential street. That’s led to discussions of reversing traffic on that street as well. “You’re sort of starting to get into the Rube Goldberg of a road redesign — let’s head off this problem with that problem,” Keys said.
In a letter to Council President Johnson, the FSNA listed off a number of other potential issues. They include a confusing two-way traffic pattern on the block of Bainbridge between 23rd and 24th; more southbound traffic down 23rd past Triangle Plaza, which could create pedestrian hazards; more traffic on small streets south of South Street; and the loss of driveways for some Grays Ferry Avenue residents.
SOSNA also hasn’t considered alternate options, the letter says, like reversing Bainbridge’s flow west of 24th. That could give drivers a different way to get to the South Street bridge, while eliminating a route from the bridge toward Center City.
A history of opposition
A recently released city traffic study predicted the directional switch on 24th would have “minimal impact” on traffic operations in the area, according to a summary published by SOSNA.
The summary does not mention traffic counts on 24th. But it said traffic would be the same or reduced on nearby blocks of Lombard Street; traffic delays would decrease at the 24th and Lombard signal; and more vehicles would turn right at 24th and South rather than continue northward for another block to Lombard.
Keys was skeptical of the study’s findings, saying it “was incomplete, in terms of not necessarily capturing the realities of that weekday morning rush hour.” He said it also doesn’t take into account recent traffic light improvements at Grays Ferry and Bainbridge that may have reduced the need for the overhaul.
Rodriguez expressed exasperation at the opposition. He said the city looked into fixing the area’s traffic issues years ago, but the effort was shot down after Fitler Square residents “fought it tooth and nail.”
“For two and a half blocks in Fitler square… like, who wouldn’t want to have all the traffic redirected around their house?” he said. Meanwhile, “all the traffic is getting crammed through Graduate Hospital and across Bainbridge. For those people that live on those blocks, it’s a nightmare.”
Under the city’s practice of councilmanic privilege, the project will not move ahead without Johnson’s approval. His communications director Vincent Thompson noted that, notwithstanding the grant award, any proposed traffic changes around the intersection have yet to be finalized.
Johnson “will consult with neighborhood groups, individual residents and the Streets Department in the weeks and months to come before making any final decision on his support or opposition to the proposal,” Thompson said.
SOSNA said on its website that the plans are subject to neighborhood feedback and could still change.
The project’s funding is also unclear. SOSNA has estimated its plan will cost $3 million, but the state grant is only $1.6 million. Rodriguez said SOSNA has some additional funds, including $150,000 a member bequeathed for architectural work and an art display at Triangle Plaza. But it does not have enough to make up the apparent gap.
The Streets Department did not respond to questions about the funding gap. A spokesperson said design work will take about 18 months, construction will take about a year, and the project could be completed by 2028.
