SANDY SOLOMON,
Bayard Lane
MIRCEA SAVU
Hilltop Road
DON GREENBERG
State Road
For Citizens for a Safer Route 206
DANIA YASKANIN
Hartley Avenue
Princeton Township
To the editor:
On January 12, consultants offered a capacity crowd in Princeton Township Hall a first look at their suggestions for the northern leg of Route 206 in Princeton. After Ian Lockwood made his presentation, he asked the audience to raise their hands if they thought his group was "on the right track;" and nearly every hand in the room went up. He noted that during the two weeks the consultants had been in Princeton, he and his colleagues had been overwhelmed with public interest in their project — he said that they had never seen so much citizen involvement in one of their design projects.
The idea of the plan is to provide a vision for future changes on Route 206 over the next decades. Changes to the roadway won't be made quickly because the State DOT doesn't have the money to make much happen immediately. But if, as changes are made, they are made according to a unified vision, then the town will benefit greatly.
Unfortunately, some invited groups and some residents will have been unable to be involved in these consultations because of scheduling conflicts. There will certainly be time for their concerns and those of others in the community to be aired as Princeton begins to consider how these "starter ideas" may be turned into more concrete proposals.
The Lockwood presentation is available, for those who missed it or those who want to review it, in two forms: first, as a PowerPoint presentation accessible on the Citizens for a Safer Route 206 website — www.stateroad206.com — and second, in copies of the program broadcast on Channel 30. The consultants' final report will be available in the spring. Local authorities will continue to receive comments on the concept plan on an ongoing basis. Send written comments to Claudia Ceballos in the Township Engineer's office (cceballos@princeton-township.nj.us) and/or to Citizens for a Safer Route 206 at rte206@yahoo.com.
Lockwood's approach to road design defies once conventional wisdom. For example, the draft plan includes a number of roundabouts. Lockwood stressed that roundabouts are not the same as traffic circles, which are being eliminated across the state, and that they have a better safety record than either circles or signalized intersections. He noted that roundabouts are effective at keeping traffic moving slowly but smoothly (the current design involves rushing to form long lines at signals), maintaining a two-lane road through Princeton (signals require widening to add extra left turn lanes), reducing the amount of asphalt in the average intersection while permitting landscaping in the middle, making it easier for pedestrians and bicyclists to get across the road, and acting as a 24/7 sentry to slow through trucks.
Other design approaches in the plan involve creating mid-block, landscaped pedestrian islands which shift a driver's focus from the highway to the crossing, provide a safe haven for pedestrians to cross one lane at a time, and create separate left turn lanes where a center lane has in the past served cars going in both directions. Also included were back-in angle parking, extensive tree plantings that change the feel of the road, and a variety of other strategies to make through drivers realize they are going through a residential area. Lockwood has noted that his plans have increased property values in the towns that have adopted them.
While we are sure that continuing local consultations will result in refinements and adjustments to these ideas for Bayard Lane and State Road, we are extremely pleased by the overall arc of the plan, down to the "gateway" treatments proposed for cars entering the Township and the Borough from the North. Princeton residents can now continue to build consensus about how to improve our community with the same positive spirit that informed these initial design proposals.
SANDY SOLOMON,
Bayard Lane
MIRCEA SAVU
Hilltop Road
DON GREENBERG
State Road
For Citizens for a Safer Route 206
To the editor:
I was disappointed that the headline for the Route 206 traffic calming proposal (Town Topics, January 18) emphasized the negative vocalizations from the EMS. My husband and I attended all three of the Route 206 planning meetings plus a private appointment with Ian Lockwood, one of the planning consultants. At no time did anyone present an opinion that improvements to Route 206 would impede emergency responses until an EMS representative spoke up during the last few minutes of the final meeting. In fact, uniformed police officers attended all of the public meetings and none of them raised concerns about the proposed roundabouts.
It was evident in the meetings we attended that access to emergency vehicles was discussed several times and accommodated in the Route 206 improvement proposal. One of the points made by the consultants is that installation of roundabouts not only improves traffic flow but historically reduces the number of accidents.
I would have preferred a headline that reflected the weeks of input by the community rather than focusing on the opinions of two people representing a group which apparently declined to participate until the last minute.
DANIA YASKANIN
Hartley Avenue
Princeton Township