The state Department of Transportation’s latest idea to ease congestion on Route 1 proposes a modification of the jughandles at Harrison Street and Washington Road, barring traffic on Route 1 north from entering Princeton between Alexander Road, in West Windsor, and Scudders Mill Road, in Plainsboro.
According to DOT spokesman Joe Dee, Washington Road (which features a quasi-circle at a traffic light) and Harrison Street (which features a jughandle at a traffic light) create backups that ripple down the road at peak hours. By altering the jughandles and changing the timing so that there are longer greens for Route 1 drivers, the back-ups will ease.
For motorists on Washington Road (Route 571) heading toward Princeton, nothing will change except the duration of their red light (though by how much no one knows yet), Dee says. Drivers on Washington Road will still be able to make a left onto Route 1 South, a right onto Route 1 North, or go straight across into Princeton.
The changes only affect motorists on Route 1 North, who will either need to get into Princeton via Alexander Road or head north to Scudders Mill Road, where they will have to turn around, head south, and make a right onto Harrison Street at the Sunoco gas station. Dee says that the mouth of Harrison Street will be widened to accommodate the increase in southbound traffic.
Dee emphasized that the plans are in the idea stage only. There is no timeframe for when anything would happen, or how long it would take to make the changes.
But the mayors of West Windsor and Plainsboro as well as Princeton Borough and Township, Lawrence, and South Brunswick want to make sure that efforts to improve Route 1 don’t create problems elsewhere.
In response to the DOT’s plan, the mayors have signed a letter written by West Windsor Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh to DOT commissioner James Simpson that requests further discussion between Simpson, the mayors, and representatives from Princeton University and the Princeton Healthcare Systems over what the coalition sees as significant points to consider.
One of the major concerns is how the changes will affect the new Princeton Hospital, currently being built in Plainsboro. Hsueh said that the coalition’s ideas include a signal system to warn motorists that emergency vehicles need to get through. The letter also references “traffic pre-emption devices” on the new ambulances.
According to Dee, such devices are used on bus rapid transit systems to change traffic signals on the fly with transponders.
Hsueh said the coalition exists to present a regional case to the DOT, but he admits that the effort comes with a healthy dose of compromise. The current DOT ideas for this area of Route 1 have been scaled down dramatically since a decade ago when the department considered eliminating the traffic lights at Washington Road and Harrison Street and building an overpass at Harrison, similar to that at Meadow Road.
But the bypass project was estimated at $190 million and when nothing materialized over the years, DOT finally pulled the funding for the project in 2008.
The DOT’s current plans run about $2 million, which Hsueh said is better than nothing. “Nobody’s going to get 100 percent what they want. That funding [for the bypass] is not coming back.”
Cantu said that all the mayors are pleased that the DOT has been focused on taking interim steps to reduce congestion on Route 1, but want to make sure the proposals for the short-term will not harm the traffic patterns on local roads as a result.
“While they may relieve congestion, they really needed to be studied to make sure there are no impacts that would be adverse to the communities when they’re implemented,” said Cantu.
The intention is not to reject the DOT’s plans at all, just to call for additional studies, Cantu said. “Princeton is particularly concerned about it,” he said. “In the end, we [the mayors] agreed we shouldn’t reject these proposals. We should ask for additional studies to be done so we have a better idea of whether these proposed changes will have adverse effects.”
How will the traffic changes affect emergency vehicles en route to the current hospital in Princeton or the new location being built in Plainsboro off Route 1? Pam Hersh, the vice president for government and community affairs at Princeton HealthCare System, said that the first aid squads from west of Route 1 “have made it very clear that the left turn lane and improvements in the signalization to allow remote control light changing are in the best interest of the residents west of Route 1.”
Hersh said that once emergency squads are on Route 1, they will have emergency vehicle access to the emergency room via a special driveway off of Route 1.
“This special Route 1 emergency vehicle access, plus the planned improvement on Harrison Street and improvements in the signalization, plus the addition of shoulders on Route 1 between Harrison Street and Plainsboro Road part of the Millstone River bridge replacement project), would mean that the emergency trips to the new hospital from the west would be very speedy and greatly reduce the wait times on Harrison Street,” she said.
