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Looks Like the Ben Franklin Bridge Event Was Attended by Every Single Person in Philadelphia and South Jersey
Published:
The Ben Franklin Bridge was closed down to vehicle traffic on Saturday for two reasons.
One, they didn’t want Dave Matthews Band emptying their tour bus sewage onto any unsuspecting tour boats below. Two, the DRPA was celebrating 100 years of the bridge itself, so they held an event to commemorate that anniversary, inviting people to walk the bridge, which would have food trucks and activities and whatnot.
The turnout was insane and it looked like it got into shitshow territory because the interest was so high. They ended up having to shut it down early because of overcrowding and medical issues:
I spent probably 30 minutes combing through video of this and reading the comments. The consensus seems to be that walking over the bridge itself was a cool and rare opportunity, but participants seemed to think it was poorly organized. Or, maybe the organizers just underestimated how many people were gonna come out to this thing, and were ill-prepared as a result. Apparently the food trucks and water stands and port-o-potties were over in Camden, so there wasn’t anything on the bridge itself. And there was only one side open for walking lanes. You can see in these videos how crammed it looks while the other side was left open for emergency vehicles and police and assorted first responders. Not an ideal event for the local claustrophobic population.
There were, however, a good amount of people replying to the complainers, asking them what they expected from this event. The whole point was to walk across the bridge. So they walked across the bridge. It wasn’t the Roots Picnic, or Lollapalooza. That was the draw, to join the army of people and do something you never get to do.
Anyway, you tell me if it was cool or if it was lame. It seems like the opinions are split based on expectation level, which is, well, usually the case.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com