By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton officials agree that something needs to be done about all the cars going in and out of the community.
But what’s the answer?
That question could be answered in the next six months, as a pair of consultants set out to prepare transit and traffic studies that officials will use to guide them toward a long-term solution.
Borough Councilman Kevin Wilkes is leading a committee that includes local officials and representatives from Princeton University who are looking at the issue, aided by municipal staff and consulting firms URS and AECOM. The two firms were hired to produce reports due next spring, looking at an area of town from Alexander to Mercer streets and from University Place to Nassau Street, all the way to the border with West Windsor.
”We have to push back against the hegemony of cars,” Mr. Wilkes said after the group’s kickoff meeting Friday afternoon in the Township Municipal Building. “It’s time to reassert mass transit.”
URS will handle the transit study. During the meeting Friday, officials agreed to look at a wide range of transit options, from light rail, monorail, streetcars and others. A parking garage is not on the list.
One URS representative said the analysis would winnow those options.
”First you want to put everything on the table (and) take off the table the ones that really don’t make sense in terms of your goals and objectives,” said Stephen A. Gazillo, director of transportation planning with URS.
Officials’ list of goals and objectives that include getting people to make more transit trips. Mr. Wilkes recalled the days when there trolley networks were used in communities in New Jersey.
”The question is at what point will no more cars fit on our roadways. And when we hit maximum vehicular log jam, what do we do?” he said. “Do we build more roads or do we create another method for people to move around and through our community?”
Mr. Wilkes said road building is out, so that means using “more efficiently” the road network in place. To him, that could include using a mass transit strategy on existing roadways.
”We’re trying to have a transit system that’s going to be performing better than what we have today and that can shift some more people out of their car to the transit system,” said Georges Jacquemart, a traffic engineer that is working as a subconsultant with AECOM. “We’re not going to attract everyone out of their car. That will never happen. But we can do better than (what) we have today.”
Mr. Jacquemart has studied Princeton, having been used as a consultant by Princeton University for some of its development projects, including the arts and transit neighborhood.
When asked where the money would come from to pay for any solution, Mr. Wilkes said: “We’re going to look at everything from federal matching grants to state subsides, to local contributions, to contributions from the private sector.”

