The Politics of Transportation in Philadelphia, 1946-1984
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ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: “LET THE PEOPLE HAVE A VICTORY”: THE POLITICS OF TRANSPORTATION IN PHILADELPHIA, 1946-1984 Jacob Kobrick, Ph.D., 2010 Directed By: Professor Robyn L. Muncy Department of History Urban transportation planning in the United States underwent important changes in the decades after World War II. In the immediate postwar period, federal highway engineers in the Bureau of Public Roads dominated the decision-making process, creating a planning regime that focused almost entirely on the building of modern expressways to relieve traffic congestion. In the 1960s, however, local opposition to expressway construction emerged in cities across the nation, reflecting growing discontent with what many citizens perceived to be a closed planning process that resulted in the destruction of urban neighborhoods, environmental degradation, and inadequate attention paid to alternative modes of transportation. Local freeway protestors found allies in the new U.S. Department of Transportation, which moved in the mid-1960s to absorb the Bureau of Public Roads and support legislation promoting a planning process more open to local input as well as a greater emphasis on federal aid for urban mass transportation. The changing culture of transportation planning produced a series of freeway revolts, resulting in the cancellation or modification of interstate highway projects, in major American cities. Changes in transportation planning played out differently in every city, however. This dissertation examines controversies over Philadelphia’s major expressway projects – the Schuylkill Expressway, the Delaware Expressway, and the never-built Crosstown Expressway, in addition to major mass transit developments such as the city’s subsidization of the commuter railroads, the creation of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, and the building of a railroad tunnel known as the Center City Commuter Connection, in order to trace the evolution of the city’s transportation politics between 1946 and 1984. Significantly, Philadelphia’s own freeway revolt succeeded in eliminating the proposed Crosstown Expressway, which would have created a daunting racial barrier while decimating several low-income African American neighborhoods. The Crosstown Expressway revolt, however, failed to change the overall trajectory of Philadelphia’s transportation planning politics, which continued to be dominated by an exceptionally strong alliance between City Hall and large business interests. Philadelphia’s turn to mass transit in the 1970s, in contrast to those of other cities, failed to redistribute transportation resources to its low-income residents, mainly because the city chose to devote a massive percentage of its federal funding to the Center City Commuter Connection, a downtown rail tunnel designed to serve approximately 8% of the region’s commuters. The prioritization of a rail system serving predominantly affluent white suburbanites left Philadelphia’s lower-income population saddled with a crumbling urban mass transit system, demonstrating that, despite a more open planning process and a greater emphasis on mass transportation, fundamental inequalities persisted. “LET THE PEOPLE HAVE A VICTORY”: THE POLITICS OF TRANSPORTATION IN PHILADELPHIA, 1946-1984 by Jacob I. Kobrick Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2010 Advisory Committee: Dr. Robyn L. Muncy, Chair Dr. David M.P. Freund Dr. David B. Sicilia Dr. Clarence N. Stone Dr. Thomas Zeller © Copyright by Jacob I. Kobrick 2010 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Completing a doctoral dissertation in history is not a task that can be accomplished without substantial assistance. I am grateful to everyone who played a role in helping me reach what felt at times like an impossible goal. While certainly the dissertation reflects the input of others, any errors in the final product remain mine alone. I would like to thank my committee members – David Sicilia, Tom Zeller, David Freund, and Clarence Stone – both for their support and for their thoughtful and insightful comments on my work. This project will continue to evolve and improve as a result of their critiques and suggestions. Not nearly enough can be said about my advisor, Robyn Muncy, whose dedication to her students goes consistently above and beyond the call of duty. It is no exaggeration to say that without her willingness to read and comment upon draft after draft, her heroic tolerance for my long and meandering emails, and perhaps above all, her constant support and encouragement, this dissertation would not have been possible. A meeting with Robyn was always the perfect antidote to the occasional discouragement one always feels during such a long and laborious endeavor; for that, and so much more, I am eternally grateful. I am thankful as well for the assistance of the excellent archivists at each of the repositories where I conducted my research – the Philadelphia City Archives, the Urban Archives at Temple University, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the National Archives in College Park, and the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington. Brenda Galloway and John Pettit of the Urban Archives in particular provided invaluable help in responding to my many requests. ii This endeavor would also not have been possible without the support and hospitality of my Philadelphia friends, whose couches and spare bedrooms were so often my home away from home on my many research trips. Spending time with these friends – Matt and Maryellen Hank, Mandy Goff, and Mike and Andrea Doluisio – was a welcome reward for endless train trips and long hours spent in the archives. The issue of funding is always uppermost in the mind of a doctoral candidate, especially in today’s difficult economic times. I would like to thank Daryle Williams, who served as the Director of Graduate Studies during most of my time at the University of Maryland, for his tireless efforts to secure the maximum possible financial support for me and other graduate students while budgetary constraints placed impossible demands upon him. I am also grateful to Peter Albert, co-editor of the Samuel Gompers Papers, not only for employing me as a graduate assistant during a crucial year in the dissertation process, but also for his friendship and support. The collaborative and collegial atmosphere at Gompers was a much-needed counterweight to the solitude of archival research. During my years at Maryland, I have been fortunate to be a part of a vibrant intellectual community. There are so many individuals who, whether or not they played a direct role in this dissertation, contributed to my growth as a historian. Too numerous to mention are the professors with whom I took classes and for whom I served as a teaching assistant, as well as the fellow graduate students with whom I took seminars, studied for comprehensive exams, and commiserated about the drudgery of grading, but I thank them all. iii Above all else, I wish to thank my wife Stacy, who may not have understood fully what she was in for when we met in 2005. For the past five years, she has supported and encouraged me with good humor and patience through the stress of comprehensive exams, anxieties about funding, countless nights away from home on research trips, and occasional bouts of despair when it seemed as though the dissertation process would never end. This dissertation is, in many ways, a shared accomplishment. Lastly, I am grateful to my son Matthew, both for waiting to be born until five days after I completed the dissertation and for providing me with what every scholar needs most – the motivation to finish. May 2010 iv Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: “The Only Satisfactory Program”: Philadelphia’s Expressway Era Begins, 1946-1959 ..................................................................................................................................... 23 Chapter 2: “A Sea of Discontent”: Expressway Protest Intensifies, 1960-1963 ............ 112 Chapter 3: “Let the People Have a Victory”: The Democratization of Transportation Politics, 1964-1968 ................................................................................................................... 155 Chapter 4: “We are Fighting for a Community”: The Expressway Revolt Succeeds, 1969-1973 ................................................................................................................................... 252 Chapter 5: “At the Expense of the Inner-City Poor”: The Triumph of the Commuter Railroads, 1974-1984 ................................................................................................................ 340 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 413 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 422 v Introduction While conducting research for my dissertation on the history of transportation planning in post-World War II Philadelphia, I made extensive use of the city’s transportation systems. To reach the outstanding Urban Archives at Temple University, for instance, I took either the Broad Street Subway or the Regional Rail system,