by KYW's Mike Dunn
An engineering study of the Linc -– prompted by reports of swaying exit ramps this past Sunday -– will look a number of factors, including the Eagles’ decision to boost attendance this season with standing-room-only ticket sales.
The Eagles this season added 1,500 paying fans to each home game by selling standing-room tickets. That boosted attendance at Sunday’s game against Dallas to 69,268. That is just 732 people below the legal capacity of the stadium:
“The engineer will look into it and we’ll see if that could be causing this.”
L&I commissioner Robert Solvibile says the engineering study of swaying exit ramps will look at attendance:
“The engineering report would say that this load will allow us to take whatever the lawful occupancy of the stadium out of the building safely.”
Two years ago the lawful occupancy of the Linc was raised from 66,745 to the current 70,000. Solvibile says the higher capacity would have had to be approved by engineers.
Solvibile says he wants to see the results of a full engineering study of those wobbly ramps before the next Eagles home game on October 29th:
“The engineer will get it right, and the place will be safe. I want to assure everybody that the City of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Eagles will work to make sure that everybody who goes to the stadium gets out safely.”
The Eagles say some amount of sway is common in structures that accommodate large numbers of people, and Solvibile agrees:
“A sway can be built into an engineering design. But what the appropriate sway here is, I don’t know. And that’s going to be the purpose of the engineering study -- to take any guess out of it and get a definitive answer as to what’s allowed there.”
Solvibile says they’ll be helped by the fact that the Linc is only a few years old and the original engineering designs are still available.
On Sunday fans said the ramps wobbled so much that they lost their balance (see related story).
Solvibile stresses that the Eagles are cooperating fully in the probe.
KYW's Paul Kurtz spoke with an expert at a local structural engineering firm about the vibrating ramp.
Thornton-Tomasetti knows stadium ramps, having been involved in the construction of numerous venues -- including the Pirates stadium in Pittsburgh and the Giants ballpark in San Francisco.
Structural engineer Mark Coggin does not believe the ramps at the Linc are a safety issue:
"Yes, it's a comfort issue, and they might want to be responsive and do some remediation to elminate the problem in the future so that they don't raise the public concern. But I don't think it's an irresponsible owner that has not addressed the issue."
Coggin says the ramps are very lightweight structures and were probably strained due so many leaving the stadium at the same time.
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