Tacony-Palmyra Bridge

Spanning the Delaware River between the neighborhood of Tacony in northeast Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with Palmyra, New Jersey, the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge was initially constructed in order to fulfill a glaring transportation need, which was to have meaningful crossings between Philadelphia and Trenton. At first, there was a car ferry between Tacony and Palmyra starting in 1922, with ferry slips built close to trolley lines on the Pennsylvania side of the river. But that soon proved to be quite popular and within a few years, there was a desire to replace the car ferry with a bridge at the same place the ferry crossed the Delaware River, further connecting northeast Philly with South Jersey.

It was in 1928 when local investors hedged their bets on having a tolled bridge built at the ferry between Tacony and Palmyra and formed the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge Company. The company hired engineer Rudolph Modjeski, to design the bridge. Modjeski also designed the Manhattan Bridge and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Construction began in February 1928 and the new bridge opened to traffic in August 1929, a mere 18 months and $4 million dollars later. At the time, the toll was 35 cents and an average of 3,500 cars a day made the trip. In five years, the number of vehicles doubled. Today, the bridge has a $4 cash toll and $3 E-ZPass toll for Pennsylvania bound traffic. Approximately 70,000 vehicles per day use the bridge. The Tacony-Palmyra Bridge was privately owned and operated until 1948, when the Burlington Bridge Commission purchased the bridge. At one time, the bridge carried the eastern terminus of US 422, but today is designated as part of PA 73 and NJ 73.

The Tacony-Palmyra Bridge has a total bridge length is 3659 feet while vertical clearance under the main span is 61 feet at high tide. While the most visible part of the bridge is an arch, there is also a 260 foot long bascule span with counterweighted decks that pivot upwards to allow shipping to pass underneath. The drawbridge design was a political compromise in order to minimize construction delays and reduce costs. It is an attractive bridge and on a clear day, you can easily see the skyline of Center City Philadelphia. I've taken some photos of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge from the bridge itself, along with some photos taken at the Palmyra Cove Nature Park on the New Jersey side of the bridge.

How to Get There:

Sources and Links:
Tacony-Palmyra Bridge - Delaware River Heritage Trail
Tacony-Palmyra Bridge - PhillyRoads.com
NJ 73 - Alps' Roads
PA 73 - Alps' Roads

Comments

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population. The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

Gribblenation

Search This Blog