PRINCETON: University says Campus Plan won’t add to traffic and planners seem to agree

By Greg Forester, Staff Writer
   The Princeton Regional Planning Board has given preliminary approval to a university plan designed to mitigate traffic increases associated with the future development of the university campus.
   The scheme, which was the subject of a Thursday night Planning Board presentation, is designed to address traffic related in part to the implementation of Princeton University’s Campus Plan, a comprehensive blueprint of projects taking the university to 2016.
   At that point the university could have up to 7,500 students and a total of 6,158 staff, according to university Vice President Robert Durkee, who stressed that much of the university’s plans were subject to change. The university could “defer or scale back (plans) due to the financial climate,” Mr. Durkee said Thursday.
   Approval of the traffic plans is contingent upon an agreement that the university would cap the number of parking spaces on campus to approximately the current level of 5,094 to control the number of vehicles coming through town, and to implement traffic controls that were presented to the board, according to Planning Board member Marvin Reed.
   With those two provisos in place, Planning Board members have agreed to commence drafting amendments that would incorporate the university’s traffic scheme into the Princeton Master Plan, according to Mr. Reed.
   One traffic-mitigating decision central to the university’s proposal is a traffic demand management program to cut the frequency of single-occupant vehicles traveling to the campus through the use of vanpools, carpools, mass transit and shuttles, among other features. University officials said they would also offer incentives to use those alternatives. Part of the program also calls for annual reports on the results of the program to be made to the Planning Board.
   ”We were very pleased with that,” said Mr. Reed, of the annual reports.
   Another strategy central to mitigating university traffic is the relocation of hundreds of administrative staff to buildings at 701 Carnegie Center and 693 Alexander Road, both in West Windsor.
   In addition the university’s Office of Information Technology data center, presently located off of Prospect Avenue, will be moved to Princeton Forrestal Center in Plainsboro along with staff, according to the same plans.
   Such relocations would mean that, with the complement of employees at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, 754 staff members would work at sites off the main campus.
   Those moves alone would divert approximately 80 percent of university-generated traffic off Mercer and Stockton streets and shift it to Route 1, according to university traffic consultant George Jacquemart, who conducted portions of Thursday’s presentation.
   Physical traffic controls highlighted during Thursday’s presentation include an oft-discussed roundabout at heavily congested intersection of University Place and Alexander Street.
   The presentation also detailed how the university planned on relying on Faculty Road as an effective east-west thoroughfare in the coming years. Faculty Road was also described as providing easy access to a 1,340-space parking facility planned for a site on the eastern side of campus off of Western Way, according to the university’s plans.
   Although Thursday’s presentation was generally well received by Planning Board members, some questioned the assumptions and results from a traffic study commissioned by the university, which examined campus-generated traffic through monitoring the total number of parking spaces on campus.
   Planning Board member Barbara Trelstad questioned assumptions about where university staff dwelled and how many staff members walked to work.
   Another source of contention was how the study found that certain intersections suffered from dramatic increases in delay time with the implementation of the Campus Plan. For example, at the Alexander Street-Mercer Street intersection, the delay during peak period was listed at over 16 minutes for some turning movements, according to the study.
   However, Planning Board traffic consultant Gary Davies said such results were the product of traffic models that failed to account for human reactions to long traffic delays.
   ”These models don’t account for the fact that traffic will divert away,” Mr. Davies said.
   Other portions of the Campus Plan, like an Arts and Transit Neighborhood plan that calls for the relocation of the Dinky station, remain controversial.
   The Planning Board and university have agreed to hold off on those discussions until next year, although the Dinky relocation came up during Thursday’s session anyway.
   Borough Councilman Andrew Koontz said the university should revisit the Dinky relocation, noting the current economic climate.
   ”In these times there are probably better ways to spend your money,” Mr. Koontz said.
   Residents living in dwellings near the eastern side of campus, and future site of the 1,340-space parking facility, also questioned what they said was a lack of certain statistics in presentations by university consultants.
   Murray Place resident Marty Schneiderman said the Planning Board should request additional statistical data before moving forward with any approvals.