History
The modern-day PATCO Speedline follows the route of several mainline railroad lines, some dating back to the 19th century. These railroads all terminated in Camden, where passengers could catch ferries across the Delaware River to Philadelphia. Early in the 20th century, the idea of a fixed Delaware River crossing connecting Camden and Philadelphia gained traction, and in 1919, the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey formed the Delaware River Bridge Joint Commission to build a bridge between the two cities. The Delaware River Bridge (now Ben Franklin Bridge) was designed to accommodate rail as well as road traffic; when it opened on July 1, 1926, it had two outboard structures beside the main roadway for rail and space for two streetcar tracks (never installed) on the main road deck. Construction of the rail line did not actually begin until 1932, and the Bridge Line opened on June 7, 1936. Relatively short, it only had four stations: 8th Street and Franklin Square in Philadelphia (the latter currently closed) and City Hall and Broadway in Camden (connecting to the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines at Broadway).
In Philadelphia, the line used a tunnel built in 1931 to serve both Ben Franklin Bridge trains and a Broad Street Subway spur designed to serve 8th and Market and the southern part of the city center via Locust Street. The tunnel, which replaced an earlier proposal for a downtown subway loop, extended under 8th to Locust, then under Locust to 16th, but as tracks were not laid beyond 8th and Market, the first Bridge Line trains did not run beyond 8th Street into the Locust Street Subway until February 10, 1952. This section is owned by the City of Philadelphia and leased by PATCO.
No sooner had the Bridge Line entered service than neighboring communities in Southern New Jersey began agitating for rapid transit extensions to serve them. To facilitate their construction, the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania expanded the powers of the Delaware River Joint Commission, which owned the Ben Franklin Bridge and the New Jersey portion of the Bridge Line, rechristening it as the Delaware River Port Authority in 1951. The agency commissioned Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Hall and MacDonald (now Parsons Brinckerhoff) to study possible rapid transit services for South Jersey; Parsons, Brinckerhoff's final report recommended building a new tunnel under the Delaware and three lines in New Jersey. Route A would run to Moorestown, Route B to Kirkwood (now Lindenwold), and Route C to Woodbury Heights. A later study by Louis T. Klauder & Associates recommended using the Bridge Line instead to reach Philadelphia and suggested building Route B first, as it had the highest potential ridership.
The last Bridge Line and Broad-Ridge Spur trains ran through the subway on August 23, 1968, when work began to convert the Locust Street and Camden subways for use by the new PATCO Speedline, which would use the Bridge Line subway to enter Philadelphia. The new Speedline from Camden to Lindenwold opened on February 15, 1969, along former Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines trackage. Woodcrest Station was added later, in 1980, between the existing Haddonfield and Ashland stations.
In 2005, PATCO officials began planning a new route in the corridor of the originally proposed Route C that would serve Gloucester County and end in Glassboro on the grounds of Rowan University (formerly Glassboro State College). On May 12, 2009, Jon Corzine, the Governor of New Jersey, formally endorsed a diesel light rail along an existing Conrail right-of-way, which was selected because of its lower capital cost and operating cost. The proposed light rail would require riders to transfer to the Speedline at the Walter Rand Transportation Center for trips to Philadelphia. The PATCO study also recommended a multimodal, regional initiative to introduce bus rapid transit to Routes 42 and 55, and upgrading New Jersey Transit's Atlantic City Line to improve its usability.
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