Pennsylvania Turnpike
Schuylkill Expressway

To many people, this Interstate is the Pennsylvania Turnpike, but only from Ohio to Valley Forge. What many might not know, is that it was at one time referred to as Interstate 80S.  The designation changed to the current I-76 in 1963.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike part of I-76 was built in sections.  The Original Turnpike is Exit 67 to Exit 226, built in the late 1930s and opened on October 1, 1940.  The Philadelphia Extension is Exit 226 to Exit 326, built in the late 1940s and opened on November 20, 1950. The Western Extension is Ohio state line to Exit 67, built in the late 1940s and opened on December 26, 1951.  For the complete history:  Pennsylvania Turnpike

Planning for a cars-only parkway, such as in New York City, to parallel the Schuylkill River began in 1932.  The Valley Forge Parkway, as it was named, would connect Fairmount Park to the Valley Forge National Historic Park with a potential extension to Pottstown and Reading.  However, unlike New York City, Philadelphia did not have someone as powerful as Robert Moses to push the plan through and so it ended up shelved.

In 1947, the plan resurfaced with the Philadelphia City Planning Commission approving a river route for an expressway.  Two proposals were drawn up:  one like today's expressway alignment, but instead of crossing the river at University City, it would have followed the river into southwestern Philadelphia and crossed the Delaware River via a tunnel.  The second proposal was what eventually led to today's expressway.  The entire expressway would have four 12-foot-wide lanes (two in each direction) and where possible there would be eight-foot-wide shoulders.  Six lanes would be built from Exit 339 to Exit 344 and Exit 346B to Exit 347B.  Both directions would be separated by a four-foot-wide median with reflectorized curbs.

Construction on the earliest section of the expressway to be built began in 1950 on the part from the Turnpike to Exit 339.  A year later, the section from Exit 326 to Exit 328 opened as part of the Philadelphia Extension.  In 1952, the section from Exit 328 to Exit 332 opened.  Construction on the Walt Whitman Bridge began in August 1953 and concluded with a ribbon cutting on May 16, 1957.  On September 1, 1954 the remainder of the expressway to City Avenue opened. Planners in 1950 predicted that 41,000 cars a day would use this stretch, compared to a 1981 study that counted 132,000 cars a day using the same stretch of expressway.

The first section of the Schuylkill Expressway opens.  (Philadelphia Inquirer)

The section to the Vine Street Expressway and the Walt Whitman Bridge were both under construction in 1955.  On June 30, 1959, the section from City Avenue to the Vine Street Expressway and from Exit 346C to the Walt Whitman Bridge opened to traffic.  The last section to open was from the Vine Street Expressway to Exit 346C in 1960.

Even with the completion, officials saw that the expressway would not be able to handle the growing traffic so the first operational study was conducted.  Out of this study, in 1962, the Department of Highways proposed a parallel route in the eventually cancelled Manayunk Expressway which would sit on the eastern bank of the Schuylkill.  Widening the Schuylkill Expressway to eight lanes was also a solution pursued utilizing the existing expressway and building four eastbound lanes above from the 30th Street Station and south through the University of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Civic Center area.  Its completion was scheduled for 1976.

Not only did the 1960s bring the completion of the expressway into Philadelphia, and a direct connection to the Pennsylvania Turnpike, but an Interstate designation as well.  The Turnpike was to be marked I-80S, this meant that it was a route south of the main I-80.  This would be multiplexed with PA 43, the designation that was already in place on the Schuylkill.  PA 43 is now used to designate the Mon-Fayette Expressway.

Rand McNally shows Interstate 80S on the Turnpike from 1960 to 1964. The truth of the matter is that markers never went up because the Turnpike was not up to Interstate standards until the late 1960s. This was due in part to the seven two-lane tunnels on the main section. Even the official Turnpike maps never designated it as I-80S.  In 1964, the Department of Highways wanted a continual Interstate connection between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.  They received I-76 in 1964 and marked it from the Point in Pittsburgh to Broad Street in Philadelphia.  A fitting number for Philadelphia since the Constitution was signed there and the birth of the United States was in 1776.  The rest of the route into Ohio retained the I-80S designation.

Not to the scale of widening as proposed in the 1960s, construction to widen the expressway from Exit 339 to Exit 341 began in 1969.  The work involved construction of a collector/distributor system of ramps for the US 1 and Lincoln Drive/Kelly Drive interchanges.  The construction finished in 1972.

In 1971, I-76 was extended out to I-79 west of Pittsburgh over the Parkway West.  The following year, the designation was changed yet again to follow the Turnpike to Ohio on its present course. That is when the Penn-Lincoln Parkway received the I-376 designation.  In 1974, I-76 was rerouted out of Center City and placed on the Schuylkill Expressway to the Walt Whitman Bridge.

I-76 and I-676 interchange circa early 1970s.  (H. Armstrong Roberts)

Again in 1970, proposals came into play on how to improve the expressway.  A series of recommendations came about in a report entitled the "South Central Transportation Study."  It recommended widening the expressway to at least six lanes between the Turnpike and Walt Whitman Bridge, building a Grays Ferry Spur along Grays Ferry Avenue, and building a ramp from I-76 westbound to eastbound Walnut Street.  And again, these recommendations were not followed.

At 11:35 AM on October 7, 1983, a truck hauling 8,600 gallons of gasoline, traveling in the right lane of westbound I-76 in Philadelphia, crossed the left lane and crashed into the Jersey barrier separating the highway.  The gasoline spilled and ignited after the truck overturned on the barrier.  Two persons suffered fatal injuries and another was seriously injured when three eastbound vehicles, which were caught in the fuel spill, burned.   Although firefighters seemed to have extinguished the fire, smoldering embers ignited excess fuel trapped beneath the westbound access ramps resulting in injuries to two firefighters and a member of the media. The NTSB determined that the cause of the accident was fatigue in the rear axle assembly of the trailer.

Time began to take its toll on the Schuylkill by the 1980s.  With mounting life and property losses from the numerous accidents and lawsuits filed against them, PennDOT devised a $250 million plan to rebuild the expressway from Valley Forge to the Schuylkill River bridge. The project began on March 1, 1985, in what became known as the "Schuylkill Squeeze."  The project included repaving with a skid-resistant material, rehabilitating the Vine Street Expressway interchange, redecking and rebuilding 50 bridges, installing a Jersey barrier in the median, installing new reflective signs to replace the aged button-copy ones, improving shoulders, entrance/exit ramps, acceleration/deceleration ramps, and drainage.

During the work, a problem was discovered with the new Vine Street Expressway interchange, which was sinking under its own weight.  The problem was rectified with a new lightweight concrete that rested on steel beams that were hammered into the ground and rested on bedrock. Finally, in September 1989, the project was completed and Philadelphia had a dramatically improved highway.

The Schuylkill really earned the name "Sure-kill Expressway" on September 24, 2000.  Perhaps the worst accident in the history of the highway occurred when a tractor-trailer plowed into a line of cars stopped because of an earlier accident, which resulted in three dead and nine injured. The accident occurred shortly after midnight on the westbound side of the highway, two miles east of the Conshohocken interchange  Upon impact, the truck continued down the highway only to burst into flames and cause a couple of cars to explode.  "It was a big mangled wreck," said Lieutenant William Hill of the Pennsylvania State Police's Belmont barracks. Twelve vehicles, including two trucks and ten passenger vehicles were involved.  The highway was closed for hours until 5:45 AM when the eastbound lanes reopened and 8:02 AM when the westbound lanes reopened.

The exit renumbering that took place on I-76 in the summer of 2000 was not the first for one segment of the expressway.  In 1974, when the designation changed from I-676 to the current I-76 from the Vine Street Expressway to the Walt Whitman Bridge, so did the exit numbers to continue the numbering sequence.  The numbers began with Exit 1 at 30th Street and ended with Exit 6 at Passyunk Avenue.  The remaining exits to the bridge were not numbered.

A double-decker Schuylkill Expressway has been discussed, and if Pennsylvania House Speaker John Perzel has his way, it will become a top priority for PennDOT.  In his discussions with Governor Rendell, he has pushed the double-decker proposal for I-76 and I-95, as well as eliminating the two deadliest intersections on Roosevelt Boulevard.  Explaining his vision, Perzel said, "You will pay like a $10 fee.  You'll go up.  You'll be able to go down to the airport and get off at Center City.  It will be quick, and it will be fast."  Rendell said of the projects, "If we had the money, sure.  It would be great."  He added that it would all depend on how much federal highway aid Pennsylvania would receive, and if the Commonwealth received less than expected, none of the projects would get off the ground.  No plans were in effect to raise the gas tax to make up for lack of money from Washington.  Department of Transportation spokesman Charles Metzger said, "The subject is not surprising.  The Schuylkill is very congested.  The governor and the speaker are both on board with the project.  We will have to investigate it further."

Usually congestion on the Schuylkill is from the volume of traffic it carries, except on October 11, 2004.  A suspicious metal box with the letters "ELF" was seen by a Norfolk-Southern Railroad employee suspended from a PECO Energy high-tension line tower near the Belmont Avenue/Green Lane interchange.  Authorities were alerted around 6:30 PM and closed both eastbound and westbound until around 9:30 PM.  Members of the state and Montgomery County bomb squads were brought in to take care of the package by first blasting it with a water cannon to open it and when that failed, the squads deposited it in a steel explosion containment vessel to detonate it at an undisclosed location.  The FBI is investigating if there is a connection to the Earth Liberation Front, which uses the acronym "ELF."  They have had interest in bringing transmission towers down and are connected to the January 2003 fire at an Erie car dealership.

There is a western counterpart to this Interstate as well which runs from Denver, Colorado to I-80 near Big Springs, Nebraska.

PennDOT Emergency Routing Maps Montgomery County I-76 Emergency Detours

Links:
Exit Guide
Interstate 76 Ends
Interstate 76 Pictures
Interstate 80S (Decommissioned)
Pennsylvania Turnpike
E-ZPass - Delaware River Port Authority
E-ZPass - Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission
Interstate 76 Designation and Independence Day - Federal Highway Administration
Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission
Pennsylvania Turnpike Toll/Mileage Calculator - Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission
Schuylkill Expressway Corridor TSM Development Study - PennDOT/SEPTA
Walt Whitman Bridge - Delaware River Port Authority
I-76 Interchange Browser - Tim Reichard
I-76 Schuylkill Expressway - Scott Kozel
Interstate 76 - Steve Alpert
Interstate 76 - Andy Field/Alex Nitzman
Interstate 76 - David Steinberg
Interstate 76 Pictures - Andy Field/Alex Nitzman
Interstate 76 Pictures - Eric Stuve
Schuylkill Expressway - Steve Anderson
Walt Whitman Bridge - Steve Anderson

INFORMATION

Western Entrance:	Ohio state line northwest of Enon Valley.
Eastern Entrance:	New Jersey state line at the Walt Whitman Bridge in Philadelphia.
Length:	350 miles
National Highway System:	Entire length
Names:	Pennsylvania Turnpike:  Ohio state line to Exit 326 in Valley Forge Schuylkill Expressway:  Exit 326 in Valley Forge to the NJ state line
SR Designations:	SR 7076:  Ohio state line to Exit 326 SR 0076:  Exit 326 to the New Jersey state line
Counties:	Lawrence, Beaver, Butler, Allegheny, Westmoreland, Somerset, Bedford, Fulton, Huntingdon, Franklin, Cumberland, York, Dauphin, Lebanon, Lancaster, Berks, Chester, Montgomery, and Philadelphia
Multiplexed Routes:	I-70:  Exit 75 to Exit 161 US 1:  Exit 339 to Exit 340B US 30:  Exit 342 to Exit 344
Former Designations:	PA 43  (1952 - 1964):  Schuylkill Expressway I-80S  (1957 - 1958):  Schuylkill Expressway I-280  (1958 - 1960):  Schuylkill Expressway I-80S  (1960 - 1963):  Schuylkill Expressway I-680  (1960 - 1963):  Exit 344 to the Walt Whitman Bridge I-80S  (1964 - 1972):  Ohio state line to Exit 57 I-676  (1963 - 1974):  Exit 344 to the Walt Whitman Bridge
Emergency:	911  (Interstate) *11 and call boxes every mile  (Turnpike)
Washington's Trail:	Exit 67 to Exit 75
Highway Conditions:	http://www.paturnpike.com/rttc/ 1-800-331-3414 - 2 - 1
Traffic Conditions:	Downingtown to Valley Forge PA Turnpike to City Avenue/US 1 City Avenue to Walt Whitman Bridge #211/215-567-5678 - 76*
Traffic Cameras:	New Stanton Breezewood (Eastbound) Breezewood (Westbound) Harrisburg East Valley Forge
Travel Radio:	1640