By Nick Norlen, Staff Writer
The fight against large trucks on Route 206 is continuing on more than one front, Princeton Township Committeeman Chad Goerner told his fellow committee members Monday.
The effort includes attempts to get commitment for funding for the implementation of the Route 206 Vision Study as well as participation in a task force looking at the possibility of revising the criteria for the exemption of certain routes from New Jersey’s Access Network, Mr. Goerner said.
Those initiatives were mentioned by local officials as two of the situation’s only positive points in December, when the state Department of Transportation denied a request by both Princeton Township and Princeton Borough for the exemption of Routes 206 and 27 from the New Jersey Access Network.
The exemption request was originally made last year after a federal court ruling allowed 102-inch-wide and double-trailer trucks with no New Jersey destination or origin to enter the access network, which includes state and county roads, known as blue routes.
Despite municipal officials’ protests against the new rules for the truck network, they went into effect in January without revisions based on municipal feedback.
However, the DOT later participated in the creation of a task force aimed at updating the blue route designations.
Now, the task force has been divided into subcommittees, and the DOT is looking for additional members, according to Mr. Goerner, who has been in communication both with DOT officials and the governor’s office.
As far as the Route 206 Vision Study, the hope is to secure funding to implement its recommendations, Mr. Goerner said.
”We’re not talking about hundreds of millions,” he said. “We’re not asking for a lot of money. We’re just asking for some attention to this issue because this issue is very important to us.”
Though DOT Commissioner Kris Kolluri has “committed to it verbally,” there has been no indication from the department about what such a commitment will entail, Mr. Goerner said.
While they await meetings with members of the DOT, officials interested in the issue are attempting to build coalitions, Mr. Goerner said, noting that Princeton Borough and Lawrence Township are already involved in the effort.
”We’re definitely doing as much as we can on the voice front, but I think we need a little more traction from our legislators and we need to be able to have some higher level meetings with the DOT and with the governor’s office,” he said. “We are committed to getting an audience and getting our voices heard. The next step is getting in touch with the decision makers. These issues aren’t going away.”
