How do you express your anger over a condition you think is unfair and potentially dangerous? Lots of people stew in silence or rage privately. Some — like Eileen Murphy of Hereford Drive in West Windsor — sit down at the keyboard and bang out a letter to the editor.
In February, 2010, shortly after the Times of Trenton published an account of an East Windsor bicyclist killed after being struck by a car on Dutch Neck Road, Murphy wrote to the paper and said she had read the story of the fatal accident “with sadness, anger, and disgust.”
She added that “regardless of whether there is a shoulder or bike lane, cyclists have just as much right to be on any road as a car does” and that “the mention in the article of a ‘blacktop sidewalk’ just past the accident scene is irrelevant, and the implication that perhaps the victim should have been riding on it is ludicrous.” Murphy concluded by asking the paper “to please refrain from making the victim in this tragic accident the one responsible for its occurrence.”
In July of 2013 the WW-P News reported that a child had been struck by a car on North Post Road. “I read with great sadness, anger, and disgust the story of the car/pedestrian accident involving a three-year-old child,” Murphy wrote.
“While I acknowledge that there may be mitigating circumstances surrounding this accident, I am guessing it was caused by careless driving . . . Cell phone use, medicated drivers, poor road design, and inadequate protection from cars all make for very dangerous and often deadly conditions on too many of our roads. Until these issues are addressed, lives will continue to be lost or forever altered.”
A year later Murphy wrote a letter to the WW-P News following the death of a pedestrian just around the corner from her house. “I was deeply saddened to learn that Xuande Guo, the pedestrian struck by a car on Clarksville Road on October 9, has died. The driver should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Perhaps if there were appropriate punishment for hitting a pedestrian/cyclist with a car, this madness would come to a welcome end,” she wrote
#b#Meet#/b# Eileen Murphy and her husband, Henry, and you would not immediately think of either of them as firebrands. But you soon discover their passion: They are avid cyclists, in the summer biking 80 miles from their home to Belmar beach and back, with a quick swim and sandwich in between. They have also participated in 15 Ironman triathlons and are preparing for another this summer.
Henry acknowledges West Windsor is “a wonderful town for walking and cycling.” However pedestrian safety is a persistent issue. In October, when Xuande Guo died after being struck by a car at the intersection of Clarksville Road and Hawk Drive, the Murphys started a neighborhood petition to improve pedestrian safety at the crossing.
“Everyone was so stunned this neighbor was killed. It could have been our children, our mother, father,” Henry says. “Everyone is concerned, we moved here for the neighborhood.”
Guo lived a mile away and he regularly walked to visit his family on Hawk Drive. He was bringing dinner to his grandchildren the day he was struck.
Henry wrote up the petition and collected 52 neighborhood signatures without having to knock on a single door. He presented it to Council at the November 24 meeting, and he also spoke before the school board at the December 9 meeting, since parents and children cross Clarksville at the Hawk Drive intersection to send them to Maurice Hawk Elementary School.
In addition the petition noted the popularity of nearby destinations such municipal complex and its surrounding facilities, which include the library, the post office, and the senior center. Henry estimates half the people in the neighborhood commute to New York, and many cross Clarksville daily to the train station, cutting through the field behind Maurice Hawk and returning home in the dark.
“West Windsor is a wonderful town compared to most, but there is still work to be done,” says Eileen. “We’re trying to improve the town to a pedestrian friendly town. One day I decided I was going to walk to Trader Joe’s, I ended up walking in the shoulder against the traffic. I want people to feel like they can go outside and feel safe.”
Henry recognizes there’s no easy answer to improving pedestrian safety in an automobile society. A pedestrian may have the legal right of way to cross, but one still has to defer to a distracted or impatient driver. The petition simply urges the township to improve the Clarksville Road crossings at the end of Hereford and Hawk Drives. There is a midblock crosswalk across Clarksville Road at the driveway to Maurice Hawk between Hawk Drive and Hereford Drive, but none from Hawk Drive.
In addition to Henry’s efforts, West Windsor Bicycle and Pedestrian Alliance president Jerry Foster, a longtime pedestrian safety advocate, developed and proposed a resolution that calls for improving the lights and adding painted crosswalks at the Clarksville intersection. Township Council has responded to community concerns, passing a resolution December 8 urging Mercer County to implement more safety measures at the Clarksville Road crossings. Council has also mentioned the organization of a road safety task force, primarily to review inadequate lighting (see story on Council news, page 10.)
Henry says growing up in Trenton in the 1950s and spending a summer in a Swiss village before college were formative experiences that enabled him “to see the great health and community benefits from infrastructure that permits walking.”
He grew up in west Trenton near Cadwalader Park and his mother was a housewife. His father, Henry Murphy Sr., was a city councilman and an undertaker at the family-owned business, M. William Murphy Funeral Home, which is now operated by Henry’s brother-in-law in Ewing. Henry went to the Lawrenceville School and then off to Dartmouth College before returning to New Jersey to obtain his MBA from Rutgers. He currently has his own CPA practice.
Eileen grew up in Long Island. Her father worked as a systems analyst for AT&T, and her mother was a homemaker. She attended the nursing program in the College of Mount Saint Vincent and has worked as a registered nurse at Saint Peter’s University Hospital for 31 years.
All three children are in New York. Kathleen Murphy teaches at Saint Stephen of Hungary School at the Upper East Side, John Murphy teaches in the West Village, and Patrick Murphy is a filmmaker based in Brooklyn.
Henry and Eileen met as they swam laps at the Fox Run Apartments in Plainsboro. Their first date was a long one. They bicycled from Plainsboro to New Hope — and they continue to cycle.
“We have a very heavy athletic background. We do most of our training right here,” says Eileen, who estimates they average 30 miles of running and several hundred miles of cycling a week in the warmer months.
They are part of the Princeton Freewheelers, which has nearly 500 local members who bicycle socially on weekday nights. For the last 15 years, including this past summer, they have also participated on and off in the Anchor House bike ride, a one week, 500 mile trip to raise money for a Trenton shelter. The two have also competed in 15 Ironman triathlons, Eileen has raced three more than Henry, which comprise of a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bicycle ride, and a 26.2 mile run. The Murphys will start training in January for this summer’s Ironman at Lake Placid.
The Murphys moved to West Windsor in 1990. After decades of rides they know which roadways are suitable and which routes are safer. But they also know that car traffic has increased and road shoulders have been reduced over time throughout the region.
Henry gives the example of Rosedale Road in Princeton and Hopewell, and how it was originally a wide road with one lane in each direction that has since been retrofitted with little paved space for cyclists. Even Route 1, Henry says, had cyclable wide shoulders before lane additions squeezed those out too. With limited room, cyclists must go elsewhere or else.
“The cars can get angry, we don’t want to cause trouble. With three feet of shoulder space, everyone is happy,” Henry says.
Eileen describes the impunity she has encountered from drivers. A cultural shift is needed as well, which she suggests could be accomplished through more police enforcement.
“I’m amazed at the pushback we get from drivers that feel we have no right to be out there,” Eileen says. “I think it’s a disrespect and disregard to other people. When I see a pedestrian or cyclists, I give them a wide berth and slow down. I think there needs to be a greater mutual respect. Part of my motivation is selfish, I’m out there all the time, part of it is to make a better community.”
When training for the Ironman triathlon the Murphys circle through Mercer County Park, a 20 mile round trip. “We leave the front door and train from here. I think everyone should have that opportunity,” Henry says.
“I think it’s more good than bad in West Windsor,” Eileen says. “In many ways we are splitting hairs here. I would like some improvements to integrate the township, so we have a more cohesive place.”
Superior township conditions aside, cars are an inescapable specter. Eileen says cyclists joke that there are two cycling subgroups: those who have been hit and those that will be hit.
“It’s risky, there have been a lot of accidents on Clarksville Road,” Eileen says.
Overall the Murphys are satisfied with cycling conditions in West Windsor, though they note it is much less safe for children and the elderly.
However it is not just longstanding safety issues and the impingement on hobbies that motivates advocacy for more non-vehicle traffic space. Cars have increased transportation efficiency and have made the current suburban paradigm possible, and Henry says this development has come at a cost.
“In an automobile society you lose a sense of town. We pay a very big price,” Henry says. “It’s very hard to go out for a 30-minute walk. Though I could walk to Princeton, it would be unpleasant.”
He says former Council member Rae Roeder once described how she crossed Route 1 by foot with her mother to go to grammar school. His babysitter’s father commuted 12 miles a day from Princeton to the Walker-Gordon farm in Plainsboro.
Henry’s non-profit clients in Trenton regularly draw him back to the neighborhoods of his youth, and he singles out the construction of Route 129 and Route 29 and its effects “on the vibrant neighborhoods of my youth.” After all, he notes, Trenton was designed before the advent of the automobile.
“Those giant highways have carved up the entire city and broken up the human development that was there for a long time,” Henry says.
And it is not a romanticizing of a bygone past that informs Henry’s views. He points out the allure of human-scale destinations and how young people are gravitating to urban areas.
“Where do people go to vacation? I’m always interested, when you go to towns we all admire, Key West, Palm Beach, Sea Girt, and Princeton, it’s so delightful to see people walking around,” Henry says. “Everyone is out on the Spring Lake boardwalk to Asbury Park. You’re reminded how wonderful life could be. I think we have to be careful, mindful as we develop the town.”
#b#For#/b# Eileen Murphy the battle continues, and her letters can sometimes stir up some ire in others, revealing the divisive viewpoints. Her letter to the WW-P News demanding justice in the death of Guo elicited the following response from Dennis Buchert of Plainsboro.
“I don’t know the facts at all, but maybe your reader is jumping to dangerous conclusions as judge and jury here. Any death is a tragedy, but a word of caution to the entitled pedestrian class, pedestrian rights, and especially exercised at open road unmarked highway crossings: you cross at your own peril. If it’s not at a traffic light crosswalk then you have no rights, you simply need to wait until some kind-hearted motorist chooses to stop and let you cross, or the road is clear. I have seen pedestrians almost dare cars to run them over as they exercise their mistaken ‘rights.’”
Murphy returned the fire in another letter to the editor. “After reading the misguided, ill informed, and often vicious rebuttals to my original letter […] I continue to observe most cars driving through crosswalks where pedestrians are waiting to cross the street. It is clear that a cultural shift in the attitude of West Windsor drivers is needed.
“I am guessing that most of those drivers would not walk or bicycle if their lives depended on it. I am fearful that the chasm between the two groups (drivers vs. pedestrians/cyclists) is so great that the only way to effect attitude change is to establish a culture of fear — the fear of being ticketed by the West Windsor police for crosswalk violations. I am supportive of any approach that will produce the results needed to make our streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists.”
#b#Sidebar: Traffic Safety by the Numbers.#/b# According to sergeant Marylouise Tarr, who heads West Windsor police’s traffic department, since the beginning of 2012 a total of 30 pedestrians and 17 cyclists have been struck by vehicles. Of these collisions, there was one death and four seriously injured pedestrians, and two seriously injured cyclists.
Of the 30 pedestrian collisions, 18 were struck in parking lots, half in the Nassau Park Retail Center. Of the 12 pedestrians struck on the streets, three were on Clarksville Road (and one serious injury on North Post Road near Clarksville involving a child) and three were on intersections on Princeton-Hightstown Road (Route 571).
Only three of the 17 cyclist collisions occurred in parking lots. Of the cyclists struck on the street, four were struck on Old Trenton Road, and two on Clarksville Road.
#b#Vision Zero, NYC:#/b# In New York City this past year, 132 pedestrians died in traffic accidents, down from 180 in 2013. Total traffic fatalities fell last year to 248, from 293 in 2013.
The city has implemented an action plan called Vision Zero which aims to eliminate traffic deaths by 2024. Modeled after a Swedish approach which views all serious accidents as preventable, according to the city website the program has expanded traffic enforcement and promised safer street designs and configurations. According to a New York Times report, summonses for speeding have been increased by 42 percent and for failure to yield to pedestrians by 126 percent.
