Editor’s note: The following letter was submitted to the West Windsor discussion group on Google in response to a post concerning the Planning Board’s discussion of the plans for the Acme shopping center site. One part of the Planning Board discussion has been the articulation of a pedestrian walkway behind the shopping center leading to the Princeton Junction train station. The Acme proposal returns to the Planning Board on Wednesday, Novemeber 10.
My mind was made up a long time ago about train station access. We bought our house on Berkshire Drive in 1975, and for 17 plus years I could run or walk in a straight line from my back porch to the train station, about 2,000 feet. Several neighbors also cut through our yard on foot. That was fine with us.
It was much better than what most train stations offer those who walk. Then, Schlumberger erected its protective fences in the early 1990s, and since then our Sherbrooke neighborhood to the east has not had logical walking routes to the station. No one has a straight shot to the station, yet our neighborhood is as close to the station as you could want (if you are a crow).
I am writing because we haven’t found a way to protest the continuing isolation of this station from the community it sits in, without advocating huge expenditures to either create a main street or fund a station area redevelopment. We have spent so much time and money talking about nearby development, but so little time has been spent on how to give our community better access to this station.
A sound redevelopment of the Acme site, along with pedestrian/bike access from our neighborhoods and 571 through the “Acme Woods” to the train station, is a good combination to support. Our walking through the woods won’t cost the developer much extra.
David Bivins
