About a decade ago a hot topic in West Windsor was the “Millstone Bypass.” This was a road that was proposed as part of some of the early ideas for alleviating traffic congestion in Penns Neck at the Route 1-Washington Road circle. The idea was to modify or eliminate the circle and reroute some of the traffic that now uses Washington Road to enter Princeton. The concept was also intended to fit in with one of the ideas for redeveloping the so-called “blighted” area on Washington Road near the train station.
The rerouted traffic would, in fact, never use Washington Road on the west side of the tracks. Instead, it would follow a new road that would leave the railroad overpass and follow a course east of Washington Road through the (then) Sarnoff property diagonally toward an intersection with Route 1 at Harrison Street. Although some distance away, part of it would parallel the Millstone River, and it was thus referred to as the Millstone Bypass. (Some people also referred to it as the Penns Neck bypass.)
It would feed some traffic to Harrison Street, but the main branch on the Princeton side of Route 1 would cut across university property and rejoin Washington Road near Lake Carnegie. It sounds complicated, but it was a workable idea, and the state thought it would work. Much of the congestion at the traffic circle would be eliminated. If you wanted to drive to Princeton from West Windsor on Washington Road you still could the way you do now, but it would be quicker to take the new road, which would bypass Penns Neck completely. Also, south-bound traffic on Route 1 could still enter Princeton on Washington Road.
One little-mentioned byproduct of that bypass idea was the extra traffic that would have been added to Harrison Street, which was then and still is just a two-lane road for much of its length. It also traverses a residential area, with houses and sidewalks close to the road. How that would have been handled if it became a major route for entering Princeton from the south is hard to imagine.
After much discussion over problems that some people mentioned such as possible environmental effects on the Millstone River, negative effects on archeological sites (stone arrowheads had been found in the area), the loss of several elm trees, inconvenience for commuters, and others (not to mention cost), the plan for this road was scrapped.
There was also much discussion about whether or not the new road would fit in with the plan to “redevelop” the station area with new high-density housing and commercial sites. Then other ideas came along, including the recent fruitless experiment to eliminate the jughandles at the Route 1 circle.
Another variation that was mentioned was the lowering of the Route 1 roadway on both sides of Penns Neck so it would pass below Washington Road where the circle is now. This would have involved the building of a temporary bypass road next to Route 1 and four connectors to allow turns between Washington Road and Route 1, as well as an overpass on Washington Road. It would also have meant that some buildings in the area would have had to be torn down. The Penns Neck Baptist Church would have had to have its foundation strengthened.
But long before the Millstone Bypass, there were other bypass ideas, probably going back at least to the 1930s. To their advocates they would have benefited both Princeton and West Windsor as well as Plainsboro and would have changed the way of traveling between the communities in a drastic way. Who knows, they might have eliminated Princeton Junction as a major commuter rail station, and changed the way West Windsor and other communities have made the transition from farmland to residential land use.
I first learned about an early version of this idea in 1947, when, as a student at Princeton I was attending a lecture in McCosh 50, a large university lecture hall that overlooks Washington Road in Princeton as it approaches Prospect Avenue. In those days, before air conditioning and electronic amplification, when the day was warm you opened the windows to cool down and let air circulate, and, if you were lecturing, you had to depend on only your own voice to be heard.
Occasionally, a large truck would start up the slight grade from Nassau Street and approach Prospect Avenue. As it passed the open windows of McCosh 50 the noise inside could be deafening, especially if it was one of the really old trucks that had solid rubber tires and a very low-tech muffler. The lecturer had no choice but to stop talking until the truck had passed. On more than one occasion when this happened I remember the lecturer saying — after the truck had passed — “We won’t have to put up with that much longer after they build the bypass.”
Bypass of what? I later learned that a Princeton bypass road had been under discussion even then for many years. The idea was to have a road that branched off of what is now Route 206 to the east, well north of Princeton. The new road would then go through the area east of Kingston — most of which was undeveloped farmland at the time — and intersect Route 1 well north of what is now the Princeton circle, missing West Windsor and Plainsboro completely.
Thus all the heavy south-bound traffic on Route 206 that now goes through downtown Princeton — some of which then goes through West Windsor on its way to Route 130 and the NJ Turnpike — would be gone. Of course, that road may not have had a major effect on the local West Windsor traffic of today, but it would probably have changed the way residential development in the area proceeded, maybe even for the better. Who knows, maybe the main commuter station in the area would have ended up being “Monmouth” instead of “Princeton” Junction. The connection between the main railroad line and the Dinky would not have been eliminated, but commuters would have had another option.
Over the years since that early idea the most important change has been the building of the New Jersey Turnpike in the early 1950s. The emphasis shifted from how to avoid local congestion to how to get more traffic to the turnpike. Eventually, this resulted — about a decade ago — in a plan to build what was to be called Route 92. That road would have started at Route 1 well north of Penns Neck at the intersection with Ridge Road. It would then have headed east across parts of Plainsboro to cross Route 130 and join the turnpike at Exit 8A. Debate over various alignments of Route 92 went on for many years. It, like the other proposed bypasses, will probably never be built.
