By Victoria Hurley-Schubert, Staff Writer
Moving seniors around the community and courtesy busing for children on hazardous routes became topics of emotional discussion after the annual reports of Princeton Senior Resource Center and Princeton Community Housing at Tuesdays’ Borough Council meeting.
Transportation is an issue for the residents of Elm Court and Harriet Bryan House because there is no public transportation in the Elm Road area. Less than half of the Elm Court and Harriet Brian residents have cars or are able to drive, said Sandra Persichetti, executive director of Princeton Community Housing (PCH).
”As people are aging in place, they’re not going to give up the cars unless there’s something they can depend on,” she told the council.
Between the two buildings there are 155 apartments with 175 seniors living in them. “Through the generosity of Tyco, we are able to retain the services of a van and driver from Buckingham Place,” said Ms. Persichetti. Each Tuesday and Thursday one building gets service between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. to the downtown area, the Princeton Shopping Center and the hospital. Once per month the seniors go to Nassau Park Shopping Center.
The PCH residents do not use the Free B, a borough-sponsored jitney service, because its current rush-hour-only route does not go up Elm Road and only runs between Borough Hall and the train station.
After the presentation of the annual reports at Tuesday’s council meeting, Councilman David Goldfarb became passionate about advocating for the transportation needs of seniors in community housing.
”I’m always struck when I see the Annual Report by the categories of income; we’re really talking about very, very low income people, so we have people who have very, very limited incomes — and 30 percent of that goes to rent — who are living over on Elm Road and in many cases can’t walk downtown,” said Mr. Goldfarb. “They might as well be living in Oklahoma; they can’t take advantage of all that we have to offer here in Princeton and all the things that make Princeton a wonderful town. It’s not acceptable.”
”(On Sept. 7) we approved courtesy busing for children who live closer to their schools than the limit where the school will provide transportation. It’s completely in our discretion, and in every case the child is living with a care provider and most of the people that we’re providing transportation to in those categories have significant family incomes,” the councilman said. “I don’t want to generalize, but in almost every case we’re talking about incomes that are large multiples of the incomes we’re talking about here (in the low-income senior housing). I want to look carefully at courtesy busing; I’m not saying we should eliminate courtesy busing and take the money and devote it to providing transportation to seniors.”
State law requires that the municipality provide transportation along hazardous routes, said Robert Bruschi, the borough administrator, at the council’s Sept. 7 meeting. Crossing guards may be an option for these areas, he added. “I do agree with David, it’s a topic we want to revisit — the whole issue of providing crossing guards as opposed to the additional buses. We’ve had a problem with crossing guards and getting them.”
Hazardous route busing will cost more than $40,000 for this school year. The borough must provide a safe route to school “because of the roads certain kids would have to cross; it doesn’t mean we have to bus them, it means we have to provide them safe crossing — which may mean a crossing guard,” said Mr. Bruschi. Finding crossing guards were an issue in the past.
”(Hazardous route busing is) totally at our discretion; we could tell the parents you’ve got to car pool, you’ve got to get your kids to school,” said Mr. Goldfarb, who chairs the finance committee of the borough, at the Sept. 7 meeting. “It’s not our responsibility.”
Mr. Goldfarb continued the discussion about courtesy busing for children at this week’s council meeting while discussing senior transportation.
”I would say, however, as far as I’m concerned, (senior transportation is) a much more pressing need than to provide courtesy transportation to kids,” he continued. “Kids who grow up in New York City find their way to school; if parents can’t teach their kids how to get to school safely, either they should be taking the kids themselves or making other kinds of arrangements or they ought to be thinking about how their kids are going to survive as they get older. That’s not the issue here. We really have people who can not, literally can not, get from Elm Court to downtown through any other means and if we’re going to be looking at quality of life issues for those people, transportation is a glaring unmet need and it’s not realistic to think it’s going to be provided unless the borough and the township take the initiative to get this program going.”
One proposed solution to senior transportation already on the books is a 45-minute route that would run between the Elm Court housing complex on Elm Road and Princeton Community Village on Bunn Drive that would go to local areas of interest, such as the Princeton Shopping Center, the public library, Palmer Square and Princeton’s Senior Resource Center ,and downtown shopping district as well as serve significant population centers, which historically had been under-served by public transit, such as several low-income and senior housing facilities in Princeton.
The route lacks funding for the estimated $113,000 it would cost to run the Free B Jitney from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays. The jitney is not driven by a borough employee, it’s driver is employed by Stouts, a contracted company, at a rate of about $50 an hour which covers the driver, maintenance and insurance, said Mr. Bruschi.
”The major issue is funding; a route has been established, I think it’s very doable,” Mr. Bruschi said. “I think the use is there, we showed that when we ran the holiday shuttle very quietly last year. Without advertising we did very well. Clearly there is a need, it just who can pay to help us to meet that need.”
For Councilman Goldfarb, the issue seems to be all or nothing for the jitney use.
”As far as I’m concerned, if we can’t get this program going where the jitney is used during the daytime I don’t want to run the jitney at all,” said Mr. Goldfarb. “We committed to a certain time for the jitney. If we can’t use the jitney during these off hours, then we shouldn’t be providing the full funding to get commuters to the Dinky because, again, if you look at unmet needs, every one of those commuters going to the Dinky in the morning can through some other means get to the Dinky.
”It may not be as efficient, it may not be as environmentally sensitive, but they’re going to get there,” he said. “We have people who will not be able to take advantage of what’s here in Princeton unless we provide transportation for them and we must provide transportation to them. We have the means to provide transportation to them, the only remaining issue is money and frankly if you look at priorities of how we structure our budget, it is a greater priority than things we’re spending money on now.”
