The following comments are in response to various print and online reports regarding Princeton Future’s proposal for the extension of the “Dinky” rail line linking Princeton Junction and Princeton Borough.
What is Princeton University’s not-so-hidden agenda? Should it not use its $16 billion endowment to make life BETTER for town and gown? In so many ways it does. However, the university needs to be far more creative and jettison its bully-like behavior. Its planning horizon should be for the next century and beyond.
Suggest more rail transport? You mean like in 1984 (and over the subsequent 25 years) when my written proposal suggested the Dinky be extended to the (former) Merrill Lynch Conference and Training Center site? If it had happened it would now be easy to extend it to the new University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro. (The Amtrak rail construction equipment sitting idle in North Brunswick is able to construct “a mile of track a day.”) What is this? A two-day job from Princeton Junction to the new hospital via the Scudders Mill Road right of way?
My detailed proposal and sustained suggestions never got past the NJ Transit Executive Director, Shirley Delibero, the “transportation professional” part of the New Jersey government cabal.
Within the past two years the abandoned Amtrak rail spur running from Princeton Junction to the Plainsboro Road bridge was removed so re-installation and a widening of the Plainsboro Road bridge would permit passage of a diesel mover unit. Diesel or autotram operation eliminates the need for the overhead high-voltage catenary line/towers and makes the trip cost-effective for the purpose of interconnecting with the Northeast Corridor in Princeton Junction.
Running the line adjacent to Scudders Mill Road to the hospital, Forrestal Center, links for Forrestal Village, Plainsboro Village, Bristol Myers-Squibb, Novo Nordisk … Well, it just makes too much sense. Our professional “planners” would have us spend more than a billion dollars creating a Bus “Rabbit” Transit along a phantom Route 1/Einstein Alley Corridor. This Rabbit won’t hunt.
How about adding a station stop at Alexander Road or Route 1 (at university-owned land or the Rexcorp site) to keep cars from creating the relentless congestion in the Junction?
West Windsor and NJ Transit WANT parking congestion in Princeton Junction to justify the parking lot construction at the former composting site and justify revenue bonds for the construction of a parking garage on the West Windsor side of the Princeton Junction station. This is why parking fees continually rise without commensurate cost increases.
The ideas so many, the obstacles far greater and institutionally imposed impasse.
Pete Weale
Fisher Place, West Windsor
