Charged with providing its own recommendation on a location and size for a parking garage and for any changes that would be necessary to the Hillier illustration that has been tweaked already by council, the West Windsor Parking Authority is recommending a parking garage on the Alexander Road lot to be constructed, with phasing of the rest of the parking improvements to follow, similar to the phasing being looked at for the whole 350-acre redevelopment area.##M:[more]##
While the Township Council has discussed five possible locations for potential parking garages in the draft redevelopment plan, Parking Authority Chairman Andy Lupo said that during its November 12 meeting, the parking authority honed in on two of those locations as prime spots, including one that is parallel to the tracks located in what is currently the Alexander Road lot, on New Jersey Transit property.
“We think that’s the ideal spot for the garage,” said Lupo. “Like redevelopment, we’re talking in phases. While redevelopment says there may be five garages, we’re looking at one. And after you go through the first one, you can reassess what the demand is.” He said this would involve looking at where redevelopment stands with regard to the number of housing units and the mount of office built to see if a second or third garage is even needed.
“By not jumping in and saying you want to build five, it gives us the opportunity to really look at is after each step,” said Lupo.
The numbers coming out of the parking supply-demand report by Desman Associates of New York are still estimating that about 2,”000 additional spaces are needed for West Windsor residents at the train station, out of an overall 3,”400 parking space increase, said Lupo. This is in line with earlier drafts of the report, which looks at the number of spaces needed to accommodate ridership projections up through the year 2015.
The original report examined the authority’s two distinct waiting lists — the one for West Windsor residents only and the one for the public-at-large, which also includes those West Windsor residents. In their own scrub of the waiting lists, they determined that 1,”900 more spaces would be needed solely for West Windsor residents, but all together, taking into account the public-at-large waiting list, about 3,”400 more spaces would be needed. The projection was based on the 50 percent response rate the authority gets on its waiting lists. At the time the draft report was issued, however there were 2,”199 names on the West Windsor waiting list, and 5,”100 are on the public-at-large list.
The parking authority scrubbed those lists earlier this fall, and found that the revised lists were dramatically reduced. After the scrubbing, the authority began looking at a revised list of somewhere around 3,”900 to 4,”200; 4,”300; or 4,”400 in total, compared with an original waiting list of around 7,”000.
With the scrubbing done, Lupo says the parking authority’s plan right now is to target 2,”000 additional spaces, although not all of those spaces would be located in one parking garage. “We don’t necessarily think we can get there with one structure,” he said. “There may be other ways to eventually add spaces,” he said. For example, a garage might add around 1,”500 spaces, but there could also be a slew of other options, like sites for parking on satellite spots, New Jersey Transit Property, or the compost site. The authority will “really continue to look at it in a phased process.”
Also discussed was Charles Morgan’s idea for putting up a parking garage near the intersection of Alexander Road and Route 1. There was the idea that the site could potentially be a location for a garage, and then there was the idea that the land near the intersection — where a large, newly-erected building sits vacant — could be used for temporary parking while improvements take place in the redevelopment area. “We have a building there that is not being utilized, and it has a pretty nice-sized parking lit,” explained Lupo. “If we could at least use that parking lot temporarily, it would be a win-win.” The building owner would make money off leasing the parking lot temporarily, and commuters would have a place to park.
A drawback of locating parking there would be getting people to and from the train station. There are two ideas circulating for taking care of these matters — one is to improve the Dinky service from Princeton to Princeton Junction; the other is to offer shuttle buses from the train to the lot.
With regard to the Dinky, Lupo explained that parking authority members could perhaps ask that another car be added to the Dinky, which would divide the commute into two halves — one from Princeton to the parking lot, and one from the parking lot to the train station. This way, someone coming to the parking lot to park will not have to wait for the Dinky to come through Princeton. One car would travel back-and-forth between Princeton and the parking lot, and the other would travel between the parking area and the Princeton Junction train station, Lupo explained.
“There are different ways of doing that,” Lupo said. “You can do it so you don’t have to switch trains. You can set it up so you can have two of them running. We’ve talked to New Jersey Transit about trying to expand the Dinky, and New Jersey Transit has been holding off waiting for the BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) to be finalized.”
“We know they’ve been making some progress on all the plans for the BRT, and our plan is to go back to them and say, ‘Let’s look at it again,’” added Lupo.
The second option of shuttle buses is similar to what occurs at an airport, when some shuttle buses take people off an airplane and shuttle them right into the terminal. “They can hustle people pretty quickly from one location to the next,” said Lupo. “The issues is that there is an additional cost. If you are going to actually build a garage there, there’s a decent expense of building it.”
In addition, track work performed and a platform might need to be build.
Lupo said he feels going with the improvements to the Dinky service itself would be a better option because it is a cheaper alternative, and if it is only going to be used for temporary parking, not much money should be spent on it.
Still, whatever is eventually built at the train station is going to create a footprint that takes up spaces currently located on site, and equipment needed to create a structure will also take up even more space.
The idea for possibly locating parking in the Alexander Road/ Route 1 area came up during the third Township Council workshop session, mentioned first by Morgan.
With regarding to constructing the garage, Lupo says the parking authority met with Nexus a year and a half ago to discuss the firm’s construction of the parking garage at the Hamilton train station. Lupo said that what the parking authority would do is work with New Jersey Transit and Nexus, or any other firm that’s willing to help build and finance a parking garage. “The attractiveness of a firm like Nexus is they’re willing to put up their own money,” Lupo said. “Taxpayers would not be footing the bills here. Users of the structure would be paying for it.”
Since the parking authority already has facilities on site, Lupo says he thinks NJT officials would prefer to work with one entity instead of various private lots.
With the council targeting adoption of a redevelopment plan in December, followed by the 45-day period allowed for the Planning Board to comment, Lupo says the parking authority might be in a position to move forward with the process in February. But that involves planning.
“We don’t believe that if we started in February, that New Jersey Transit is going to be ready to go right away,” he said. “Realistically, you’re still potentially a year and change away from seeing some real progress.”
And regardless of what happens with redevelopment — whether a plan is adopted or not — the parking authority will still be looking at building a parking garage.
“That’s been our plan all along,” he said. “We definitely want to work within the township redevelopment plan when they ultimately have one. But in the meantime, the locations are all fitting into what the proposals have been to date.”
