PRINCETON: DOT Commissioner urges Route 1 cooperation

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
   State Department of Transportation Commissioner James S. Simpson on Wednesday urged Princeton-area business leaders to support a roughly $40 million project to ease congestion on Route 1.
   Mr. Simpson, addressing the Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce, waited until nearly the end of his 50-minute speech before touching on a “conceptual plan” for a stretch of the highway from NJ Transit’s Dinky overpass to the Millstone River. He did not go into any details or specify when the state would make up its mind whether to add a fourth lane of traffic in either direction and three jughandles and make other changes to the road.
   ”…I strongly recommend that you look favorably upon this project, and then we will work feverishly to get into all the environmental and all the preliminary engineering phases to get this thing going,” Mr. Simpson said at the Nassau Club at a Chamber breakfast. “We don’t have it funded yet, but we’re hopeful.”
   The change, if approved, would meet traffic demands until 2035. He also touched on how the state is using technology to improve traffic flow on Route 1. “We’re changing the signaling from I-95 up to at least Scudders Mill Road in the next year so that you’ll travel a lot faster,” he said.
   He said while travelling after 10 p.m., he twice was able to drive from Route 1 in New Brunswick to Alexander Road without hitting any red lights.
   Mr. Simpson, a Princeton resident, felt it was critical to make the investment in an area that companies are relocating to, in a part of the state known as Einstein’s Alley.
   In October, Mr. Simpson ended a trial program to close the jughandles at Washington Road and Harrison Street amid an uproar in West Windsor, where residents of the Penns Neck section felt the brunt of motorists making illegal turns.
   ”We pulled the plug because of West Windsor,” Mr. Simpson said in his remarks about that decision.
   Mr. Simpson said that during the experiment, there had been increased traffic on Alexander Road — something he attributed to the “great coordination” between the state and the county. “Nobody told us, nor did we ask,” that the Quaker Road bridge was out.”
   Though the experiment improved traffic on Route 1, he said he was concerned about what he called the “livability” on the West Windsor side of the highway as well as the traffic queues and the U-turns. Eric Payne, a resident of Penns Neck who attended Wednesday’s breakfast, said after Mr. Simpson’s speech that he thought the latest proposal would not help his part of town. Rather, he said, a bypass was necessary that runs around the north side of the Sarnoff property out to Route 1.
   ”More needs to be done,” he said.
   Representatives from Plainsboro, Princeton, West Windsor, Princeton University and Princeton HealthCare System met with Mr. Simpson earlier this month to examine the state’s “plan B,” in his words. Aside from the extra lanes and three jughandles, the proposal calls for a reconfigured intersection at Route 1 and Washington Road so that motorists travelling north on Route 1 are kept from making left or U-turns.
   Peter M. Crowley, president and CEO of the Chamber, said his organization plans to study the DOT’s concept and then take a position on it. The Chamber has member businesses along the highway.