Reconstruction of a section of Plainsboro Road between Dey Road and Enterprise Drive is among the capital improvement projects slated for 2008 in Plainsboro.
Mayor Peter Cantu announced at the Township Committee’s December 27 year-end meeting that the township had received a $250,”000 grant from the state Department of Transportation for that project.
According to the state DOT’s website, the municipal aid grants were given to 438 New Jersey towns to fund street improvement, rehabilitation and safety projects. West Windsor also received municipal aid in the amount of $200,”000 to be used for phase one of the Penn Lyle Road project, according to the website.
Meanwhile, in West Windsor, the grant will provide funding for milling, overlay, and drainage improvements and the widening of Penn Lyle Road between Village Road West and Westwinds Drive. The project also aims to improve bicycle and pedestrian access, with road striped with 12-foot travel lanes and 6-foot wide shoulders in both directions. The project, which is estimated to cost $360,”000, does not require right-of-way acquisition, and includes a speed survey, and evaluations of passing zones and potential sidewalk extensions and pedestrian crossings.
In Plainsboro, Township Administrator Bob Sheehan said Plainsboro Road will be reconstructed between the Dey Road intersection and Enterprise Drive. “There’s some nice pavement where we did the intersection improvement, and you go down to the other intersection, there’s nice pavement. In between, not so nice. That’s what we’re fixing up.”
Sheehan said the grant money was helpful “because we have these important maintenance issues that if we can get assistance in financing the corrections, then that’s great.”
The township also received an $80,”000 grant from the Middlesex County Board of Chosen Freeholders it will use for its phase two of the Plainsboro Road Bikeway Plan. The township recently completed phase 1, which “extends essentially from Walker-Gordon development on Plainsboro Road towards town, up and over the Amtrak line.”
Phase two will create a bike and pedestrian path from Maple Avenue to Prospect Road, “which is essentially the next block,” Sheehan said. Plainsboro received a separate $80,”000 grant it will combine with this one to put a total $160,”000 toward the project. “That is the last missing link,” Sheehan said of the second phase. “People will now be able to get across the Amtrak bridge a little safer and get into town.”
He said he will be sitting down with township engineers and other consultants soon to work out the schedule for capital improvement projects for 2008, and is not yet sure when the work on Plainsboro Road or the bike and pedestrian path will take place.
In other business during the December 27 meeting, the Township Committee approved an ordinance revision to include more commercial zones in the development fee schedule. Commercial developers have a responsibility to provide 2 percent of equalized assessed value as fees for affordable housing. Those fees are placed into an affordable housing trust fund the township uses to provide money through regional contribution agreements and other options.
The ordinance, according to Sheehan, “left out the Neighborhood Business, General Business, and Village Center zones.” Those zones will now be included in the fee schedule. “They had been inadvertently excluded when we amended the ordinance a few months back,” Sheehan said.
