PACKET EDITORIAL, Feb. 7
By: Packet Editorial
The Princeton area, like most growing suburbs, has been engaged for as far back as anyone can remember in a chicken-and-egg debate over traffic:
Which came first the highways or the cars?
Did we build so many highways that we encouraged people to buy cars and drive? Or did so many people buy cars and drive that we had to build more highways?
Many people of many different persuasions have weighed in on this subject. Some blame construction of the interstate highway system for encouraging suburban sprawl which, in turn, encouraged reliance on the automobile and abandonment of mass transportation over the last half-century. Others maintain that Americans couldn’t resist the convenience, comfort and freedom of the automobile, creating a demand that could be satisfied only through construction of a comprehensive highway system.
This debate continues to rage in central New Jersey, as policy-makers consider projects ranging from a parking garage in downtown Princeton to a Route 1 bypass in West Windsor to a limited-access connector from Route 1 across Plainsboro to the New Jersey Turnpike. Will building the garage, the Millstone Bypass or Route 92 simply encourage more people to drive more cars, causing more congestion, more pollution and a steadily deteriorating quality of life? Or does the probability that more people will drive more cars oblige us to build more garages, more bypasses and more highways in order to relieve the congestion, pollution and diminished quality of life we’re already experiencing?
What brings this question to mind is a modest experiment that began this week on the Princeton University campus. The P-Rides shuttle, a free bus that loops around the campus every 30 minutes between 8:15 a.m. and 7:45 p.m., makes stops at key locations serving graduate students and faculty who might otherwise be disposed to use their cars. If the service proves to be popular, it could reduce congestion and demand for parking not only on campus but also downtown, since some of the stops are convenient to the borough’s central business district.
One high-tech feature of this service, which should increase its popularity, is its Global Positioning System, or GPS, function, allowing anyone with a computer to access real-time information about the location of the shuttle and when it will arrive at its appointed stops. Take away one of the most frequent complaints about mass transit you never know how long you have to wait out in the cold before the bus actually shows up and the P-Rides shuttle could turn out to be the most exciting thing to hit the Princeton campus since Nude Olympics were banned.
If the university community does climb aboard the P-Rides bandwagon, however, it may be a leap of faith to suggest that the experience could be replicated on the other side of Nassau Street. Graduate students commuting to classes across campus are one thing; workers commuting to jobs across town, across the county or across the Delaware are quite another. And while Princeton University is both independent and wealthy enough to inaugurate the P-Rides system without having to divulge how much it costs, any public agency that might wish to operate a similar system will not enjoy this luxury.
Still, any effort to institute a mass transit program that offers a realistic alternative to reliance on the automobile is worthy of strong support. And maybe, just maybe, it will turn out to have some broader, practical application. It’s possible that at least one of the ideas that’s been floated over the years to relieve congestion in Princeton remote parking for employees of downtown businesses, served by a user-friendly shuttle or jitney system could have its prototype in this campus experiment.
None of this, of course, will end the great chicken-and-egg debate over highways and cars. What it may do, however, is scramble up some support for an appealing alternative to more of both.

