Highway Teardown Tour | 9. Philadelphia, PA

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Big Dig – “Highway Teardown Tour | 9. Philadelphia, PA” (July 15, 2026)

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Big Dig, hosted by Ian Coss, explores Philadelphia’s ongoing and contentious transformation of Interstate 95. Recorded live at the Pen and Pencil Club, this conversation weaves together voices from journalism, urban design, and public policy to examine why cities like Philadelphia struggle to reverse the damage of urban highways, and why, even amid new projects, highway expansion still seems inevitable. The panel includes Inga Safran and Daniel Pearson (Philadelphia Inquirer columnists) and Leslie Richards (former PennDOT secretary and SEPTA CEO).

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Main Discussion Points

1. The Legacy and Impact of I-95 in Philadelphia

• Contrast with Boston’s Big Dig: Panelists note Philadelphia’s recurring refrain: “This isn’t Boston,” highlighting a civic pessimism about whether transformative infrastructure projects are feasible in Philly.
  • “Here in Philly, we just kind of get by.” (Ian Coss, 02:31)
• Historical Context: I-95 construction split neighborhoods and altered the city’s character—damage the current reconstruction both addresses and perpetuates.

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2. The Ongoing I-95 Reconstruction: North to South Philly

• Inga Safran’s Experience: As an architecture critic, Safran initially struggled to interpret PennDOT’s proposed plans for North Philadelphia due to vague and technical presentations.
  • “Even though I’ve been a reporter a long time and covered a lot of different building projects, I found it very, very difficult to imagine what is this going to be like? Is it really going to be better?” (Inga Safran, 07:16)
• Disappointment with the Outcome: Once constructed, the rebuilt section felt more divisive than before, featuring “unbelievable giant spaghetti ramps…horrifying.” (Safran, 08:31)
• Official Response: Even PennDOT staff admitted the bridge was more “invasive” than anticipated.
  • “There’s a lot more structure than we expected.” (Safran quoting PennDOT, 09:05)

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3. South Philadelphia Plans: Community Losses and Contested Justifications

• Daniel Pearson’s Perspective: Multiple proposals exist (High, Middle, Low), but the “high” disruption option is favored; key losses include Rizzo Rink and long-standing baseball fields.
  • “My kids use Rizzo Rink. It’s going to be destroyed…” (Pearson, 10:17)
  • “The plan is to put a ramp right through those fields. They would be gone forever.” (Pearson, 11:27)
• Difficulty Understanding the Proposals: Official presentations understate harm; only experts could decipher the real impacts.
  • “What’s in the text and what they’re doing are very different…almost purposefully so.” (Pearson, 11:51)
• Economic and Transit Mismatch: The justification for expansion is weak; traffic drops south of the Ben Franklin Bridge, while city transit sees far higher use.
  • “SEPTA’s busiest train route has more people than use 95…not a single person who is not connected with a port wants 95 expanded.” (Pearson, 13:21)

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4. Why Urban Highways Keep Growing: Structural and Cultural Forces

• Leslie Richards on Institutional Inertia:
  • Highway expansions are driven by car culture, powerful construction industries, and federal regulations focused on safety metrics.
    • “The asphalt industry, the cement industry, very well organized and vocal…It doesn’t make sense.” (Richards, 16:50)
• Safety Standards as a Justification:
  • Safety requirements (shoulder and lane widths) are cited for widening, but at the cost of neighborhood fabric.
  • “Safety, safety, safety is always the thing that is first…But it’s never understood what are the other problems, like bringing these highways right to the window of a family house…” (Safran, 19:47)
• Conflict of Priorities:
  • PennDOT’s roads remain the most dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists, revealing a car-centric approach.

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5. The Challenge of Public Input and Long Timelines

• Glacial Pace Hinders Engagement: Community engagement occurs, then plans stall for years, causing people to forget or move on before construction begins.
  • “It just operates on a different timescale…It’s really, really hard to influence the outcome of this 30 year design project.” (Safran & Coss, 23:05–23:24)
• Lack of Corridor-Wide Vision:
  • Opportunities for city-wide reimagining, like removing or burying I-95, have not materialized due to political caution and limited resources.

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6. The Penn’s Landing Cap: Modest Progress

• What Is the Cap? A park built over a sunken section of I-95 meant to reconnect Center City to the waterfront—a “lesser option” than a full removal or tunnel, but an improvement.
  • “The cap is kind of like a lesser option compared to what the big vision was…But it is so much less ambitious.” (Pearson, 28:52)
  • “You should be able to walk to the water from Chestnut and Walnut…that was all destroyed for 95. So it is going to restore some of the connection…” (Pearson, 29:46)
• Policy & Funding Roadblocks: Initial federal resistance to funding “reconnection” projects—eventual success required framing as environmental mitigation, not transportation.

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7. Reform, Imagination, and the Limits of Political Will

• Systemic Challenges:
  • True highway transformation (burying/removing I-95) would require rare, persistent political courage—much longer than any single political career.
    • “You really have to be a true believer…and then you have to be succeeded by another true believer …for 16, 24 years. That’s really unlikely.” (Pearson, 32:27)
• Hopeful Note from Richards:
  • Small wins and persistent public demand matter; change takes generations.
    • “It’s like running a relay race. You get to hold the baton for just a little bit…We just want to make it better so then the next person can come and build on what we've done.” (Richards, 34:12)

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8. Calls to Action and Remaining Challenges

• Community Organizing Is Essential:
  • Stopping unnecessary expansion will require long-term, organized opposition.
    • “To fight this highway expansion will require a very organized political opposition...It needs an organization for it to succeed, because otherwise PennDOT is a steamroller…” (Safran, 36:18)
• Urban vs. Suburban/Rural Priorities:
  • The lifestyle and needs of city residents (many without cars) aren't reflected in statewide policy driven by car-centric suburbs.
    • “It’s okay for someone to drive two minutes extra to avoid demolishing somebody’s house or baseball fields.” (Pearson, 37:13)
• Institutional Realities:
  • Engineers and agencies ultimately carry out political directives—the public must organize and pressure politicians to shift priorities.
    • “It’s ultimately a political…we need political leadership. We need political organization.” (Safran, 40:20)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I found it very, very difficult to imagine… I just couldn’t make heads or tails of it.”
  — Inga Safran (07:16)

• “When it’s this rolling process, when is the right time to think about the big picture?”
  — Ian Coss (23:45)

• “Philly is a cautious city. I mean, for good reason. We don’t have that much money…We could be one of the great cities in the world like we used to be.”
  — Daniel Pearson (29:02)

• “You get to hold the baton for just a little bit…so then the next person can come and build on what we've done and make it better.”
  — Leslie Richards (34:12)

• “If there’s a groundswell of public opinion, if people are afraid of losing an election, they will take this up…”
  — Inga Safran (40:33)

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Key Timestamps for Major Segments

• [00:00–04:17] — Introduction & Philadelphia context
• [04:17–09:19] — Inga Safran’s take on North Philly reconstruction & challenges in project transparency
• [09:19–15:14] — Daniel Pearson on South Philly proposals, community disruption, and flawed justifications
• [15:14–21:16] — Leslie Richards on why highway expansions keep happening; institutional and regulatory inertia
• [21:16–24:10] — The Penn’s Landing Cap: hopes, process, and limitations
• [24:10–30:25] — Ambition gap: Philly’s caution vs. transformative potential; funding and leadership constraints
• [32:07–35:53] — Is radical highway removal possible? Political will and intergenerational efforts
• [35:53–41:31] — How to fight expansion plans; urban vs. rural lifestyle clashes; importance of organizing and public pressure

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Tone & Style

• Candid, pragmatic, and at times wryly humorous, especially about Philadelphia’s self-image and political culture.
• Hopeful but also realistic, cautioning about the scope and scale of change possible.
• Original voices preserved: E.g., Inga’s self-deprecating “This is a confession,” Pearson’s blunt, activist tone about wasted opportunities, and Richards’ measured optimism from years in public service.

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Takeaways

• Philadelphia’s highway saga illustrates the enduring challenges American cities face in healing the wounds of urban freeways.
• Even with engagement and better intentions, the inertia of car-centric infrastructure—reinforced by regulations, funding streams, and culture—remains hard to overcome.
• True transformation will require sustained organizing, vision, and successive generations of leaders willing to prioritize people and neighborhoods over cars and concrete.

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For more on the Highway Teardown Tour, including upcoming episodes, visit GBH’s website or subscribe to The Big Dig where you get your podcasts.

Transcript

[A]

Support for the Big Dig comes from Revision Energy, an employee owned renewable energy company with over 20 years experience building and servicing solar systems for local homes and businesses. Learn how to Revision your [e-mail] support also comes from Boston Ski and Tennis Ski or snowboard inside all summer long on the area's only immersive simulator Experience Ride on the same machine the US Ski Team trains on all year round. Available in the Newton location. Learn more online at bostonski&tennis.com. On October 14, 1992, the Colorado Department of Transportation opened up a new stretch of highway snaking through the bottom of a place called Glenwood Canyon. And with that short stretch of highway complete, the Interstate system itself, at least as it was originally envisioned, was also complete. The roads ran coast to coast, border to border, connecting every major city in a vast network. The greatest public works project in American history was functionally done. And yet it was not done. Not even close to done. Even now, decades later, as I travel around the country to cities that are tearing down highways and trying to heal the damage of the Interstate era, we are at the same time continuing to expand our urban highways, continuing to turn parks and neighborhoods into new lanes and new off ramps, including in the middle of our most dense and historic cities. So why is it so hard to stop? My name is Ian Coss and from GBH News, this is the Big Dig today on the Highway Teardown Tour, Philadelphia. Now, there are some obvious similarities between this town and the place where I live. Boston. You've got the same colonial era buildings, the same in your face sports culture, the storied universities, the decrepit transit system that does somehow still get people around. But talking to people in Philly, especially my fellow journalists, I feel like everyone here talked about Boston the way that dreamy socialists talk about Scandinavia. Like, well, sure, you could do the big dig up in Boston. We could never do something like that here. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised. I mean, this is the city that gave the world the ultimate underdog story of a small time boxer taking on the heavyweight champion of the world. But it really was striking to me how often that refrain came up. This isn't Boston. This isn't New York. This isn't Seattle. Here in Philly, we just kind of get by. As I write this, Philadelphia is in the process of rebuilding i95 through the heart of the city. The process began more than a decade ago and it will continue for years to come. Working in chunks from north to center to south. The project is bringing some real improvements to the city, which you'll hear about, but also some real disappointments. So I wanted to bring together a group of journalists and planners to understand why the city continues to expand its highway footprint and. And why it's so hard to imagine another path. We recorded this conversation live in downtown Philadelphia at the Pen and Pencil Club, a venue unlike any other on this tour.

[B]

So I would say for the folks listening later, you can imagine the way it was described to me was a dive bar, but a dive bar that also happens to be the oldest continuously operating press club in America, the Pen and Pencil. And given the setting, it felt appropriate to include in the conversation tonight the not one, but two journalists who are very intimate with the highways of Philadelphia. So here with us tonight, we have Inga Safran and Daniel Pearson, who are both opinion columnists for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Thank you so much for doing this.

[C]

Thanks for having us.

[D]

My pleasure.

[C]

So

[B]

part of the reason I thought it'd be nice to have the both of you is that my sense is that you come at this issue from slightly different perspectives. Inge, I'm curious how you first got interested in covering i95, because you're a design critic, and it's not an obvious topic for a design critic.

[D]

So, you know, technically, my title is architecture critic, which is kind of a legacy title, whose sole job was to write about individual buildings and critique them from an aesthetic point, point of view. By the time I started this job, that just didn't seem to be meaningful to the way the world was going. And I have been writing about highways almost since day one when the Big Dig was completed. I went to Boston and I did a long piece that ran on page one on Sunday about how the. That was a moment when the Big Dig had a very bad rap, and I wrote a piece saying, no, this is a great, great thing for Boston.

[E]

Wow.

[B]

So you're doing a revisionist history of the big dig 20 years before me.

[D]

I mean, I know there are disappointments and problems, but as soon as I saw it, I saw what an amazing thing it did to reconnect Boston's downtown with. With the waterfront and how it changed everything.

[B]

So the reason I wanted to have this conversation here and now is there's a project ongoing in Philadelphia to rebuild Interstate 95, starting from the north, working its way down to the south. And I was curious if you could kind of take us into your story of reporting on that rebuild, how you got interested and kind of drawn into it.

[D]

Yes. So, you know, they did start from the north and I.

[B]

This is like 10ish year in the 2000 and tens.

[D]

Sounds about right. And I think when PennDOT, which is the State Department of Transportation, started this reconstruction, they thought they were being very progressive and they decided to have a big community engagement process, which probably they didn't have in the 1960s. And so they called some meetings. And I went to those meetings, meetings with the community. And I remember they were proposing at that time to do things a little differently. They were going to have rain gardens and noise barriers. But, you know, they described the design in ways that were really hard for the average person to process. And even though I've been a reporter a long time and covered a lot of different building projects, I found it very, very difficult to, to imagine, you know, what is this? What is this going to be like? Is it really going to be better? And I spent a lot of time reporting that story. And because I'm a columnist, I sort of have to have a point of view. And I just couldn't, I couldn't come to a point of view about what it was going to be because I just couldn't make heads or tails of it.

[B]

You didn't have an opinion?

[D]

I didn't have an opinion because I couldn't understand it. And this is a confession.

[B]

I think we're in the right place for that.

[D]

I didn't write that column because I just didn't know what to say. And fast forward, the thing is built and it's like this unbelievable giant spaghetti ramps in the middle of this very fine grained row house neighborhood. It looks like, you know, they airdropped something from Iowa into the city. And it's horrifying. And I did write a review of that. And then I called up the same people from PennDOT that I had talked to 10 years earlier. And, you know, I was saying I was really shocked by it, how, how much it further divided the neighborhood. And you promised this was going to be a new day. And even they conceded, well, there's a lot more structure than we expected.

[B]

I feel like transportation planners have the real fine knack for understatement.

[D]

So even they didn't understand just how invasive it would be.

[B]

So, Daniel, I want to bring you in here. So we were talking about North Philadelphia. That's the thing that was airdropped in from Iowa. That's done. It's built. I went and saw it today. It's huge. Next up, this project is now going to work its way south into South Philadelphia. You live in South Philadelphia?

[C]

I do.

[B]

What has been proposed so far. And what would that look like down there?

[C]

They have three different proposals out there for South Philadelphia. They're calling it the High, Middle, and Low plan. If you read the presentation that they put out, it's pretty clear that their preferred plan is the high plan, as they describe.

[B]

Can you break down. I mean, is it literally, like, high? It's taller.

[C]

It means how much disruption there's going to be and how much it's going to cost. So under any of the plans, there's going to be a lot of disruption for everybody in South Philadelphia. The two things that most people are upset about are Rizzo Rink. Rizzo Rink is a skating rink. My kids use Rizzo Rink. It's a very affordable place to learn how to skate. It's going to be destroyed as a part of the reconstruction of i95. They've promised to find a new home for it. They have not supplied a new home for it. Things there are very much on freeze until they can figure out what their future is. It's really hard to start a new program if you know that you're gonna die in five to 10 years against your will.

[B]

And is it. I'm just trying to picture it truly. The skating rink building is underneath the structure.

[C]

Yes. The skating rink building is actually under the highway.

[B]

I'm always really interested in those places where the elevated structure does actually, like, a weird coral reef attract.

[C]

We have a lot of those. We have a lot of those. I mean, some of the neighborhoods monetize that. They sell parking in those spaces, and they use it to spruce up their neighborhood and kind of make up for the presence of 95 as much as they can. But we're also going to be losing some baseball fields, too. Baseball fields in South Philadelphia that people have been using for generations. The plan is to put a ramp right through those fields. They would be gone forever.

[B]

And this is not just a temporary measure. This is taking that land.

[C]

It's a permanent ramp.

[B]

Do you remember how you first saw these plans? Like, were there renderings? Did you have a moment, like Inga, of trying to wrap your head around what this would actually look like?

[C]

It was. It was hard to find that. And I actually learned more from talking to people who are actually engineers or transportation planners who read the details and said, no, this is what it's going to do. And I was shocked because what it's going to do and what they're saying in the text are very different. There's a huge gulf. So in the text, they'll say, this is not about expanding capacity. This is about safety and only safety. And we need to widen these shoulders because what we have now isn't safe. What if somebody gets pulled over? And I don't want a police officer to get hit by somebody speeding? That sounds legitimate. But then later on they say, this is about expanding economic capacity as we revitalize the Port of Philadelphia. So it's not only was it confusing, it was almost purposefully so, because what they were saying didn't agree with what they were saying.

[B]

From reading your columns, I get the sense that. Do you identify as a Yimby?

[C]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay, 100%. I was a Yimby before. Very, very Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson came to this idea way after me.

[B]

Okay, so you're somebody who. You're not afraid of change. You're not afraid of taking some land, if need be, for the improvement of the civic infrastructure of the city. Why is this project different? Why are highways different for you?

[C]

So I am in favor of building and infrastructure and all those things, but this particular set of highway, I think that the economic case for it is not that strong. If you look at how much Traffic is on 95, it really drops off when you hit the Ben Franklin Bridge. That's the bridge, if you're not from Philadelphia, that connects Center City and Old City, Philadelphia to Camden, New Jersey. Once you get south of that bridge, traffic on I95 is not significant. And essentially, one of the big justifications for this project is that at certain times of the day, a few intersections near 95 get a little bit backed up. A little bit backed up. Not like a lot backed up. Like, oh, no, you might have to wait one whole light cycle extra at rush hour to get onto 95 off of Delaware Avenue a few times a day. If they applied that standard to anything SEPTA was doing, which is our transit agency, they'd have to spend so much money tomorrow. And there are way more people riding SEPTA than use 95. In fact, the market Frankfurt line alone, which is SEPTA's busiest train route, has more people than use 95. So this mismatch between what people in Philadelphia actually want, which is a stronger, better transit agency that they can actually rely on on the weekends and not have to pay for an uber. And what PennDOT cares about, which is expanding this highway that nobody actually wants in their neighborhood in the first place, is stunning because there's not a single person in Philadelphia who is not connected with a port who wants 95 expanded. I mean, I've written about It I get emails from people who disagree with me. I did not get an email response from people saying, oh, I want 95 expanded. That's a bad person. Maybe they exist, but they're not reading the Inquirer.

[B]

Got it.

[D]

If you look at the price tags for a single exit ramp would easily be a billion dollars. SEPTA's budget, annual budget is $3 billion.

[C]

That's capital and operations.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Wow. So it seems like the question ahead of us at this point now is what's done is done in North Philly. Can we imagine something better for the parts to come in Central and South Philly? And so I think it's time to bring out of the penalty box somebody who can actually speak for the government side of this equation. We have with us Leslie Richards, who is the former Secretary of Transportation for the state of Pennsylvania. Which means that when our columnists here are piling on about Penn Dot, that was your old agency, but interestingly, you also ran septa, the transit agency that we've been talking about. So you have a unique perspective on many modalities of transportation. So, Leslie, the question I want to ask you is why is there so much pressure and momentum to continue expanding the footprint of our urban highways? Because we're not. Mostly, we're not talking about brand new links in the interstate system. We're not talking about creating whole new roads. It's just a matter of continually widening the roads that are already there. Why?

[E]

A lot of things. I think people love their cars. I think the asphalt industry, the cement industry, very well organized and vocal about things. And I also think that the regulations and the rules that are coming out of the administration, the Federal Highway Administration, that the state dots have to live up to to build things. Right. It doesn't make sense. A lot of it.

[D]

Right.

[E]

And if those are the rules that they need to design against, they do that. I would like to tell. When I was at PennDOT, so I was the first planner to lead PennDOT.

[B]

Planner, as opposed to an engineer. An engineer.

[E]

Right. So I was the 25th Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

[C]

Wow.

[E]

23 were engineers and one was an attorney. To this day, I'm still the only planner. And so when I proposed the idea, when I was being vetted for the position, I said I would like to bring planners into PennDOT. There were no planners at PennDOT when

[B]

I came on board for the agency

[E]

that we have a whole. We have a whole deputate. That is called planning, but it's really funding.

[B]

Let's go in the Weeds. For a second. Daniel had mentioned, or both of you have mentioned this, like these safety standards as a real big driver of expansion. Because we come back and say, okay, we need to rebuild it. It's been 75 years, but the lanes have to be so many feet wide and the shoulder has to be so many feet wide. How do you understand those? The balancing act between making a better, safer, more functional highway and not needing to constantly expand the footprint of our highways? Is that even part of the discussion?

[E]

It is, it is. Look, I care deeply about our communities, but I also attended three funerals of PennDOT employees who were killed during accidents that involved access on and off highways or they were setting up construction sites. It's very dangerous. And so it's very hard to say that we don't need full shoulders along where when people really do need to pull off and it can save lives. But I do think people fall into that conversation probably more than they should. Are they truly looking at everything and looking at the impacts? So it's hard when people have been trained their entire lives. And safety, safety, safety is always the thing that is first. And all of the regulators and the Department of transportation in D.C. is always going to ask you that first.

[D]

So that is really the crux of the problem. And I wrote a column about the South Philadelphia expansion of 95, and I said, okay, build it, but don't build it back bigger, just build it, rebuild it the way it is and within the existing footprint. You know, widen the shoulders, maybe you reduce the lanes, but because the framing, this goes back to the whole framing of the problem. Of course you want these roads to be safe. Of course you don't want people to risk their lives. But it's never understood what are the other problems of bringing these highways right to the window of a family house and having kids breathe in the fumes. It's always seen in this siloed way.

[C]

And, and with PennDOT too, specifically, and I have to be fair, PennDOT is getting better on this topic that I'm about to talk about. But with, with safety specifically, it's a very blinkered attitude because they'll spend a billion dollars expanding a highway ramp to improve safety, but then they control a lot of roads throughout our state, and their roads tend to be the most dangerous roads for pedestrians and cyclists, especially here in Philadelphia versus city roads versus the city owned roads, because PennDOT has intervened to make your road more car centric than the community wants it to be.

[B]

Leslie, could you explain to us some of the unique challenges of I95 in the state of Pennsylvania. And just the sort of mechanics of rebuilding this road.

[E]

Okay. I believe it's a little over 40 miles of I95 in Pennsylvania.

[B]

It just kind of ducks in and out of Pennsylvania.

[E]

Yeah. And you have over a third of it that's on structure. So it's pretty much a bridge, which is a whole different type of maintenance and operations that are needed. Right. When you're supporting structure, you have the abutments, you have the piers, it's raised.

[B]

So are you just always rebuilding 95?

[E]

It feels that way. I do believe that when I was PennDOT Secretary, when I was reading about it, I was like, oh, the 20 year plan. I was like, I think this is longer than a 20 year plan. To me it seemed it's probably more like a 30 year plan. It seemed like a 40 year plan.

[D]

I just wanted to add, and that's a real problem for the community to respond to the design because, for example, we just had this big engagement process in Philadelphia for this South Philly segment that Dan referred to. People went to meetings, they engaged online, and that went on for a few months and then silence because PennDOT responds. It takes years and years to actually design the new structure. People have lives, they forget about it. Then maybe 10 years later, there's another engagement session. Meanwhile, 10 more years go by and then they start building it. So it's really, really difficult.

[B]

It just operates on a different timescale.

[D]

Well, I think this is why, unlike a building, like if you oppose a building or some other project which has a much shorter time frame, you can influence its outcome. But it's really, really hard to influence the outcome of this 30 year design project.

[B]

Yeah. The other thing that strikes me is that when it is this rolling process, when is the right time to think about the big picture? Like when in that whole decades long, north, south, beyond process, do you actually step back and think about the entire corridor at once?

[C]

We tried that a while ago. We had meetings about the big picture and in our classic Philadelphia way, we were too afraid to take a big swing and we laid down a bun called the cap over 95 at Penn's Landing.

[B]

Okay, I want to get to the cap in a second. Let's get to the cap right now.

[A]

So I didn't mention this at the top, but in between the north philly section of 95 that is done and the South Philly section that is planned, there is a central Philly section that is underway right now, a section called Penn's Landing. This section will look Quite different from what was there before. But as you can maybe tell, our columnists are not entirely sold on it. That's after the break. Support for the Big Dig comes from the law firm of Davis Malm. Immigration laws are complex. From multinational businesses to entrepreneurs with families, their attorneys assist in obtaining short and long term immigration benefits law. Learn [e-mail] and also from the MIT Federal Credit Union mortgages designed to make your home financing journey effortless. Federally insured by NCUA equal housing lender NMLS number 699225.

[B]

So as we're doing these live tapings around the country, there's a number of these cities, a few dozen of them in the last 20 years or so that have been looking at various kinds of cap projects where it's not a full on Big Dig, it's not a full on like tunnel boring machine style project, but it is a way to cover up a piece of the highway and restore some of that urban fabric. How did you get interested in Leslie, in this idea of Penn's landing the cap there?

[E]

Sure. So obviously very familiar with Philadelphia. I've lived in the Philadelphia region, I always say I lived in the SEPTA service region my entire life. And one of the first meetings that was put on the calendar when I went to Harrisburg was with Joe Forkin from the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation. And he wanted to make sure that I knew about the idea of the cat, which I have to say I didn't when I got there. And so we listened and I actually loved the idea. I thought it was a great idea. I have been on so many trips to see historic Philadelphia from when I was a little kid to taking my own children there. And I never really saw the water when I, I wasn't even aware that the water was there and was intrigued by the fact that between Chestnut and Walnut it was actually at grade. Right. The highway itself, the highway, which is unusual. Right. Because it's, it's on structure for so

[B]

much as we've discussed.

[E]

Right. And so I reached out to my counterpart at fhwa, Federal Highway Administration, and I said, we're thinking about building a park over here at i95. And there the phrase, you know, kept coming up like, we can't correct the sins of the past. That's what I kept hearing from fhwa, really, we can't.

[B]

Like that's not our job.

[E]

They were not interested at this time, this is 2015, and they were not interested in any type of federal money being used for reconnecting those communities that had gotten divided by interstates. And so I just kept pushing and kept pushing and kept pushing. And it was, I think at least a year later when I finally got a call from, it was Renee Siegel, the FHWA administrator for Pennsylvania. And she said, I think we're going to be able to say that the cap would be advanced mitigation and that you will be able to use some federal funds. And that was really what pushed it forward.

[B]

And you didn't have to justify it in transportation terms. It was justified as environmental remediation for the highway.

[E]

Yes.

[B]

Daniel, I feel bad I cut you off earlier when you were. You wanted to talk about the cap. So now we've got, we got a kind of a baseline for the cap. What's your take on it? How did you respond to this? Because we were talking about this idea of a corridor wide vision. How does the cap fit into that for you?

[C]

For me, like I said, the cap is kind of like a lesser option compared to what the big vision was. Philadelphia is a cautious city. I mean, for good reason. We don't have that much money. I mean, we're like three times the size of Boston and Boston spends like two thirds as much as we do every year. So we don't have a lot of resources. So I understand some of our caution, but when we had this on the table, look, we can remove this highway, we can bury this highway, and what we end up with is a couple blocks of a cap. I mean, look, it's a huge improvement over what was there before. Before, if you wanted to get to the water, you had to go on the sky bridge, which meant like climbing all the way up. And there was no shade on the sky bridge at all. And most of the tourists come here in the middle of summer when it is 100 degrees and humid. It is absolutely miserable. If you want to get to the water on the sky bridge, this will be a big improvement for the parts of the city that are right there. You should be able to walk to the water from Chestnut and Walnut, which are our two biggest shopping streets. And if you haven't been here, Independence hall is on Chestnut. So, you know, if you were signing the declaration, you would have been able to see the water. You would have been able to see Dock street, which was our historic home of our port, where people were unloading things that was all destroyed for 95. So it is going to restore some of the connection that was there, but it is so much less ambitious. And I'm always going to push for the city to be more ambitious this city has great bones. It has great potential. We could be one of the great cities in the world like we used to be.

[B]

Leslie, why can't we do better?

[D]

I'm trying to.

[E]

It takes long term planning, right. And I have to tell you, I was so excited to be the first Planner to lead PennDOT, and I thought I might only have four years to do something. And I think this comes across a lot of people's minds. When you're in a decision making role, you're not sure how long you're going to have. And so I wanted to do something that would be better. You always want to leave the place better than when you came. And you try to figure out what are the wins that you can get. The reason I'm here today, I told a few people, they're like, why are you doing that? You know, why are you coming?

[C]

Why would you subject yourself?

[E]

Why would you do that? It's because I want a better result. I want us to have this conversation now. I'm as frustrated as anybody here that we haven't been able to sit down and have a full conversation, that we haven't had people of influence trying to lead this conversation, because that's often what you need in order to move this forward. But I am unaware right now of a big conversation to bury large portions of I95. I also know that with money issues, you know, it has to happen, you know, in very small phases as it is now. I'm not saying that will always be the case. And so there's a lot of constraints that we have that are frustrating, and we have to figure out what it is that we can do.

[B]

So regardless of what seems, you know, politically viable in this administration or in this particular set of circumstances, as you look ahead to the future of the city, can you imagine a more radical re envisioning of i95 and what could that look like?

[C]

I hate to be cynical, but I really doubt that we're ever going to get rid of 95 or even bury it here in Philadelphia, politicians really love ribbon cuttings. And a project that not just your successor, but your successor's successor might cut the ribbon for is just not something that appeals to your typical mayor, especially when it's such a heavy political lift. You really have to be a true believer to want to have this happen. And then you have to be succeeded by another true believer who's going to stand up to PennDOT and FHWA and all the business interests that want this expansion and the highway, let alone an expansion to happen. And do that for 16, 24 years. I mean, that's really unlikely. And this is a city where political courage is not very common, unfortunately. It just isn't. I mean, that's just how it would be.

[E]

I'd like to be a little more optimistic here.

[B]

All right.

[E]

And you would think, I've seen it up close and I know how hard it is. I'm not saying it would be easy, but the last week when I was. Maybe it was the last month when I was PennDOT secretary, I did an interview, a real fun interview. And they said, if you had a magic wand and you could do one thing as PennDOT secretary, what would it be? And my answer was, Barry I 95. And I do think it's the public that has to run with it. I think they have to put the pressure on their elected officials. Every time someone runs for office, I think they have to say, what do you think about burying i90? It has to be up there. But in some ways it's happening already. And that's. I know we don't like to give Philadelphia credit when a lot. But let's think about it now, because I went to the ribbon cutting of the cap, and there was already two other PennDOT secretaries after me. There was another governor after me. And someone from the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation came up to me and said, leslie, you should be up there. If you weren't there at that time, we would not have the money to move forward. And she was like, I can't believe they didn't, you know, they didn't even say your name right at this. At this ceremony. And I said, that's not the point. Right? We know that we start things. And when you get in some of these jobs, I always say it's like running a relay race, right? You get to hold the baton for just a little bit. You take it from who was there before and you pass it to the person who's in front of you now, look, I'm PennDOT Secretary. I'm not a mayor. I'm not a governor. I'm not. So elected officials may feel a little bit differently, but through that. But I can tell you, those of us who are running agencies and those of us, we just want to make it better so then the next person can come and build on what we've done and make it better. And so that's what gives me hope that we can do it. It's going to be on a much more complex and complicated and challenging timeline than the cap will be. But I think it can happen, and I hope it does.

[B]

So if we bring it back to the kind of immediate practical questions at hand, the rebuild of i95 that is planned but not yet executed for South Philadelphia, is there room to meaningfully change those plans? Are there practical steps, things that we could do that any of you think would make a difference down there?

[D]

You know, I think to fight this highway expansion will require a very organized political opposition, and people have to be willing to be in it for the long term. When I knew this event was happening tonight, I wrote to one of the activists in South Philly who's concerned about losing the baseball fields. And he said, oh, yeah, I forgot about that. That fight, that opposition. And, you know, he feel. I know he cares a lot about it, but, you know, it's. You know, it's hard to fight something like this for a decade to make it the sole focus of your life. It needs an organization for it to succeed, because Otherwise, you know, PennDOT is a steamroller, and those engineers will just keep designing, and then they'll say, sorry, it's too late. You should have. You should have told us earlier.

[C]

I think especially the. The ramps need to be looked at, because I can tell you, you go out into rural Pennsylvania and you miss your exit, you're there for 20 miles, really long time. I mean, we were on there for, like another hour one time, you know, and it would actually be really easy to build ramps out there because there's no traffic. You don't have to worry about people backing up. So if you need. If they want to pour concrete and asphalt and build more ramps, go do it somewhere else. You know, you don't need to do it in South Philly. We don't need all these ramps. It's okay for someone to have to drive two minutes extra to avoid demolishing somebody's house or baseball fields. It's two minutes. It's not a big deal. You're already in the car. You're not getting rained on. You got AC and heat. You're comfortable. You can. You can put up with that. And we need PennDOT engineers who, by the way, work in the middle of nowhere surrounded by highway ramps and don't work in our. In the heart of our city to understand that life is different here than it is out in, you know, wherever they live in the middle of nowhere.

[B]

We.

[C]

We use other things besides cars and everybody.

[E]

I do some PennDOT engineers here in Philadelphia. I'm sure there's saying, I can't. I can't say sit here and listen to huge categorization.

[C]

The headquarters is out by King of Prussia. It's surrounded. You can't walk there. You can't take a bike there. I don't even know if there's a SEPTA bus that goes there. And, I mean, there's a third of the residents near 95 in those neighborhoods don't own a car at all. And then the biggest group is the 45% that owns one car for the whole family. For the whole family, for the whole household. That's just a completely different way of life than how things are in most of Pennsylvania. And to me, you have to rebalance the priorities and the money between these groups to help get more of these resources to people who aren't driving every day.

[E]

I just want to say that you can be pro SEPTA and pro penndot at the same time. And it doesn't have to be. It's not binary. It doesn't have to be either or. And transportation projects are really hard. Just one thing about the engineers. Imagine it's your job to keep a roadway that gets well over 150,000 cars a day on it in good condition.

[D]

Right.

[E]

And you can only abide by the rules that exist today. So that is your job. I'm not saying they haven't made mistakes. I'm not saying that every community meeting has gone really well. I'm not saying that there couldn't have been other changes to give us some better results. But I just want, you know, it's something I was able to see up close, and I feel like it's my responsibility to show other people as well. Next time you meet an engineer, talk to them about their challenges, about, you know, what they. What they need to do. It's not so simple.

[D]

It's ultimately a political. I mean, the engineers will do whatever they're instructed to do. It's a cultural decision. So we need political leadership. We need political organization.

[B]

And the politicians will do what they are pressured to do.

[E]

Yes.

[D]

Yes. If there's a groundswell of public opinion, if people are afraid of losing an election, they will take this up. But without that kind of public pressure, things will just go on as they always have.

[E]

So the good news is you're in control, right? You having these conversations and keeping it going, very, very hard to do. Right. But with most of long transportation stories, and I'm sure the Big Dig has them as well, you probably have a handful of residents that you can point to that kept it going, right. That people said, that person's crazy, you know, or they showed up everything. They did this, they did that. But there's always.

[D]

There's.

[E]

You can always point to those people. I'm assuming that's the story with the Big Dig as well.

[B]

And you can only tell in hindsight whether they were crazy gadflies or whether they were visionaries, but at the time, it's really hard to know. Yeah. So please keep these conversations going and please join me in thanking our guests for tonight. Leslie Richards, Daniel Pearson, Inga Safran.

[A]

Next up on the Highway Teardown Tour, we head back to New England with a stop in Providence, Rhode island, before rounding out the tour home in Boston, where we fill in the final untold chapter of the Big Dig story. A very special thanks to Miles Bryan, Jen Kinney and Tom Grassler, who are all members of the Pen and Pencil Club and also fantastically talented audio producers in their own right. They helped us with this taping. Also thanks to John Geding and Whyy for helping to spread the word, and to my friend Nacho for putting me up for the weekend. This entire tour has been a product of many people chipping in just enough to make the whole thing work, and nowhere was that more true than in Philly. As always, if you want to chip in and help support this show, become a member of the HOV Lane. It's our membership program. You can find all the [e-mail] Hovlane the Highway Teardown Tour is produced by Fiona Boyd and myself, Ian Coss, with support from Isabel Hibbard. Our editor is Lacey Roberts. The executive producer is Devin Maverick Robbins. The artwork is by Bill Miller. The Big Dig is a production of GBH News and distributed by prx. See you in Providence. Hey, I want to make sure that you know this series you're listening to right now is part of an ongoing feed telling stories from the past to help us understand our present. Our first season is all about infrastructure. The second season is about gambling, and we've got more seasons planned. So if you want to stay on top of what the team and I are doing, go ahead and follow or subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen.

[B]

We've got some really exciting stories coming

[A]

up and I hope you'll stay with us. Thanks

[E]

from prx.