In the Sounding Off section of last month’s issue of the Princeton Echo, Richard K. Rein wrote an article about pedestrians in town that I believe deserves a response.
I often find visitors to Princeton shocked to see me walk out boldly into a crosswalk on Nassau Street with full confidence that oncoming traffic will stop. To tourists, Princeton pedestrians must seem a bit like Moses and Nassau Street the Red Sea, parted merely by stepping into a crosswalk without so much as a honk in protest.
Of course, even in Princeton this oasis of pedestrian-automobile friendliness is tiny, extending only to the central stretch of Nassau Street, Witherspoon, and a few side streets. It may be that state law mandates that cars yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk, but even one block from Nassau on Wiggins, one finds drivers paying pedestrians no heed. Outside of college towns like Princeton, even that small deference to those on foot is absent, leaving cars the sole proprietors of the roads and pedestrians seen as an unwelcome nuisance at best and a threat to fast commutes at worst.
In Princeton we hear complaints about the shared nature of the road, treating it as a quaint and frustrating legacy of our historic downtown. The implication is that we’d all be better off, or at least drivers would be, with wider roads, larger parking lots, less dense development, and fewer on foot and in the way.
Are drivers and pedestrians competitors? Is mobility a zero-sum game where gains for those on foot come at the expense of those in cars? Public policy in Princeton and its surroundings has certainly valued the car over the pedestrian for decades. Our downtown was developed on a human scale, with densely packed row houses, five story buildings built right up to the sidewalk, and every kind of use mixed together. The result is the pedestrian paradise that today is far and away the most valuable and sought after real estate in the region.
Our planners, however, decided that it was all wrong and the zoning under which the rest of the town and region were developed consequently strictly separates the places people live and work, and makes sure new buildings are set back far from the road with large mandatory parking lots and few pedestrian amenities.
Since World War II, Princeton and its region have been planned on the assumption that everyone will drive everywhere all the time. Well, have we built the driver’s paradise envisioned by our planners?
The funny thing about Princeton is it proves that the more pedestrians there are, the better for those who drive. Even by the Department of Transportation’s measure of “level of service,” Nassau Street is rated to be easier to drive down at rush hour that the main roads of surrounding townships that were designed solely around the automobile. Rather than get in the way of drivers, pedestrians make way for those who drive by staying out of cars and on the sidewalk.
Imagine if all the thousands of Princeton residents who walk to work every day, not to mention the thousands of students, college and high school, who walk to class, instead got in cars and drove. We don’t need to imagine because it would look just like West Windsor or Plainsboro with gridlock a daily reality. When everyone drives, everyone suffers. Our zoning intended to make life easy for the car, but instead made it easy for traffic congestion. Every time when driving that we fail to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk, that we make walking unsafe or intimidating, we only make our own lives more difficult. If people can’t walk they’ll drive, adding to congestion and packed parking lots.
We need a new vision in our town planning for alternatives to the automobile. The most glaring inadequacy in Princeton is in bicycle infrastructure. Despite the total lack of bike lanes we nonetheless have many intrepid bicyclists. I’m struck when dropping my son off at the University League Nursery School how many parents drop their children off by bicycle and then continue on to work on campus or in town. Parking is already difficult at the nursery school but it would be catastrophic without the bicyclists.
Can cars and pedestrians coexist? Absolutely. We need each other. Let’s make Princeton a safe place to walk, not just on Nassau Street but everywhere we find pedestrians waiting at a crosswalk for a car to yield. Let’s find a way to make Princeton safe to bike in and find a way to add long-needed bicycle infrastructure. Let’s also, when on foot, not make life difficult for drivers by ignoring the signals.
Let’s plan for the future by building communities where people can actually live in walking distance of where they work and shop so that driving isn’t the only option. Every time I’m frustrated by a jaywalker on Nassau Street I’ll remind myself it could be worse: I could be sitting on Route One with no pedestrians in the way, just a long line of cars.
David Keddie is a Princeton resident and founder of the organization Walkable Princeton, which looks to advocate for a smarter, more sustainable approach to development and the built environment in the Princeton region.
