By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton University students going home for Thanksgiving waited to catch the Dinky at a new train station that school, state and local officials gathered at Tuesday to celebrate.
University President Christopher L. Eisgruber, appearing at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the afternoon, said the opening of the station marked the end of the transit part of the school’s $330 million arts and transit project. He said the train service is important to the town and the university, and one that he had used as a Princeton student and still rides today.
On a tight schedule, the ceremony was timed to end before the Dinky returned from its short trip from Princeton Junction. Mr. Eisgruber was joined by NJ Transit Executive Director Veronique Hakim, state Department of Transportation Commissioner Jamie Fox, Mayor Liz Lempert and others who crowded into the climate-controlled waiting room.
The station also includes a canopied platform and a new Wawa convenience store that is connected to the waiting room by a plaza landscaped with honey locust trees. The university, which owns the station, has not said how much the facility cost to construct.
The Christie administration was a major supporter of a project that has sparked lawsuits and criticism within the community because it involved moving the train line 460 feet south.
“This beautiful facility,” Mr. Fox said, “is a great addition to the university and to the state of New Jersey.”
Mr. Eisgruber, wearing an orange tie for the occasion, said the area would remain a construction site through the fall of 2017. Other elements over the next two and ½ years involve constructing the three arts buildings and turning the two former station buildings into a restaurant and a café.
“We will do our best to enable our campus community members, local residents and visitors to come to and from campus as smoothly as possible,” Mr. Eisgruber said.
In their remarks, none of the speakers mentioned the role that former university President Shirley M. Tilghman had played. She got the idea off the ground and endured the slings and arrows from the critics.
Ms. Tilghman, a member of the university faculty, did not attend the ceremony. She was teaching at the time, the school said afterward.
Mayor Lempert said the Dinky is the “unofficial symbol” of the school and the town: the train Albert Einstein rode and F.Scott Fitzgerald wrote about in his book, “This Side of Paradise.”
“We love our Dinky, we’re passionate about our Dinky,” she said. “And we believe in the importance of public transit and the vital connection it provides for all Princetonians.”
Councilwoman Jo S. Butler, a former member of Borough Council, attended the ceremony and stood by a vote she had cast against the school in 2011. She opposed the zoning changes the university had sought for the project.
“Do I still think that we’re better when transportation terminates closer to the population? I do,” she said. “Have they built a nice station? Of course they have.”
Fellow Councilwoman Jenny Crumiller, who also voted against the zoning, said earlier in the week that “other plans” would not allow her to attend the ceremony.
“I don’t want to get into that,” she said by phone when asked Monday what her “other plans” were. She dismissed the suggestion that she was snubbing the school.
