While none of the candidates disagreed over the need to improve traffic conditions on Route 571 in the vicinity of the old Acme shopping center, the slates differed in how aggressively they would work to enact the improvements. Lindsay Diehl of West Windsor Moving Forward expressed support for the administration’s plans to secure funding from Mercer County. “It is all in the works, but we just don’t want to slow it down. We want the county to move forward with their plans,” Diehl said.
That comment drew a sharp rebuttal from Bryan Maher of the opposing ticket, Strong Leaders for West Windsor, who argued that the mayor’s and administration’s attention to the InterCap proceedings on the other side of the train tracks had sidetracked efforts to get the county to start its Route 571 improvements. “To quote Ms. Diehl, ‘we don’t want to slow things down’ — the difference between us and your ticket is that we want to speed things up. We don’t want things to stay the same,” Maher said. “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”
But the issue is complicated by continued opposition to the county plan by the West Windsor Bicycle and Pedestrian Association. Jerry Foster, the WWBPA president, recently sent a letter to County Executive Brian Hughes criticizing the county plan for failing to address the goals of enhancing “regional mobility, capacity, safety, economic development and support for multi-modal transit.”
Repeating criticism voiced in November, 2010, when the WWBPA attempted to persuade council to adopt a new resolution, Foster said in a letter that “the proposed new design for Route 571, which includes a continuous two-way center left turn lane, the same 45 mph design speed, but no pedestrian crossing refuges, will make it even more dangerous.” Foster wrote that the AARP calls two-way center left turn lanes “suicide lanes”, because they “increase the chances for vehicular conflict among all drivers.” (See the full text, page 2.)
In a rebuttal letter Mayor Hsueh made clear his intentions of securing county funding for the project, making sure no steps backward are taken. “I am not looking to repeat history where we had funding allocated for the improvements to Route 571 only to lose it due to constant debates on the design. It has been 20 years since we had money allocated and I would like to see us move forward.”
