Spring Garden Could Host Newest Stretch of Greenway

Spring Garden is going to live up to its name. The Philadelphia neighborhood is likely to become the newest stretch of the East Coast Greenway, which extends 2,900 miles up the Eastern seaboard from Maine to Florida. It’s an exciting project, but the stretch of the Greenway running through Philadelphia is lacking. Spring Garden Street has been proposed as the remedy to that problem.

In this artist’s rendering the Spring Garden Greenway is depicted.

The Greenway trail system has lanes for bikers and walkers, much like the latter-day Appalachian Trail has become. The difference is that, while most hikers on the Appalachian Trail are weighed down with backpacks and camping gear, walkers on the Greenway move through city areas with access to the amenities and conveniences within. It’s believed that turning Spring Garden Street into a thoroughfare for the Greenway would benefit both travelers and Philadelphia residents alike.

The biannual State of the Greenway convention just convened in Philadelphia. Accordingly, a team of federal auditors from the U.S. Department of Transportation visited the street to assess the proposed thoroughfare and to investigate the plans as they stand. The Greenway Summit was convened by the Durham, N.C.-based East Coast Greenway Alliance (ECGA). As per the Executive Director, Dennis Markatos-Soriano, ECGA chose Philadelphia for its meeting due to their appreciation for the city’s impressive progress in coming up with new trails and green spaces within the city. The Summit found that there was room to add new walking and biking trails to the street without disrupting the flow of current vehicle traffic. While there are already existing bike and walking trails, it has been determined that safety could be improved on them.