PENNS NECK EIS PREFERRED PROBLEM STATEMENT

PENNS NECK EIS PREFERRED PROBLEM STATEMENT

Proposed by: Tri-State Transportation Campaign, Millstone Bypass Alert, Sensible Transportation Options Partnership, Sierra Club, Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association, and Washington Road Elms Preservation Trust

There is an unacceptable level of auto dependence in central New Jersey exacerbated by the increase in auto-oriented residential, office and commercial land development throughout the central New Jersey region.

To improve auto-mobility, and without any proposed changes in land development patterns or intensity, the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) widened Route 1 north of South Brunswick and south of the Washington Road intersection of Route 1 in West Windsor Township, and eliminated some traffic lights by constructing grade-separated overpasses. These actions were revealed in the Route U.S. 1/Penns Neck Area Improvements Draft Environmental Assessment/Section 4(F) Evaluation (September 2000) to have increased vehicle throughput, but not reduced traffic congestion, as levels of service for those roadway segments still remain very poor.

NJDOT proposed removing the three traffic lights on Route 1 in Penns Neck, which NJDOT viewed as constraining vehicle throughput on Route 1; building the Millstone Bypass over Route 1 to provide a substitute east-west access (replacing it with fewer lanes than local east-west crossings currently carry, however); and widening Route 1 with additional lane capacity – a proposal which has been rejected for many reasons in favor of this community-based planning initiative.

The current high level of auto-dependence has led to an impairment of mobility across modes and quality of life, including:

1. Auto and truck trip growth leading to congestion that will continue at the same level of service – "D" – for the future of Route 1 even after the proposed upgrades in infrastructure are completed. ( Note: The letter grades correspond to a ranking system for the level of service offered by these roads and intersections. An "A" is smooth flow; "F" is stop and go traffic);

2. Auto queues at intersections crossing Route 1 east and west at peak hours that exceed ________ now and are projected to last _______;

3. Residential neighborhoods in Penns Neck and Princeton Junction, in West Windsor Township, and in the Harrison Street area, in Princeton Borough, becoming traffic conduits for regional and local trips, making the living situation along these arterials noisy and impaired;

4. A lack of safe routes for children to walk and bicycle to neighborhood schools;

5. A lack of safe bicycle lanes and paths to accommodate intra- and inter-municipal trips of all kinds within five miles;

6. A lack of appropriate bus routes to serve major origins and destinations, both work trips and non-work trips, and too little use of, and information about, existing bus routes;

7. A growth in single-occupant vehicle commuter work trips due to job growth without corresponding measures to reduce demand to appropriate levels, such as parking management and employee transit incentives offered by public and private sector employers;

8. Few reliable, convenient feeder jitney or other transit services to the Princeton Junction station (except for the limited Dinky route) to feed trips to and from the region on the Northeast Railroad Corridor;

9. Use of Route 1 and Route 130 by heavy, wide trucks for long-haul (even if not interstate) trips that could utilize the New Jersey Turnpike for at least part of the trip, (a problem exacerbated by the lack of incentives for truckers to use the Turnpike);

10. A possible widening of Route 571 (Princeton-Hightstown Road) and a connection with the Hightstown Bypass, which would further impede pedestrian crossings and degrade the residential character and cohesion of the Princeton Junction community;

11. The retention of a structurally deficient Alexander Road bridge over the Northeast Corridor Railroad.

Any solution(s) designed to address the stated problems will need to respect the integrity of the resources listed below and the character of the neighborhoods in the area, while providing for smoother traffic flows by reducing trips and limiting trip demand, or by providing for growth in trips through bus and rail transit together with the requisite and appropriate pedestrian and bicycle path links.

The area contains many unique and valuable natural, historic and cultural resources, which need to be protected, including:

The Millstone River and its watershed;
Little Bear Brook;
The Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park, as a recreational resource;
The Delaware and Raritan Canal, as a source of drinking water and as an historic resource;
Lake Carnegie as an historic district and as a recreational resource;
The Washington Road Elm Allée (extending from Route 1 to the Delaware and Raritan Canal) as an historic district and as a major scenic landscape element;
The First Baptist Church of Princeton, in Penns Neck, as an historic site and a community resource;
The historic Red Lion Inn on Washington Road in Penns Neck;
The Cemetery at the First Baptist Church and the Schenck-Covenhoven Cemetery in the Princeton University fields off Washington Road, in West Windsor;
The natural areas, including forests and wetlands, in West Windsor in the vicinity of the Sarnoff property and the railroad tracks and bordering the Millstone River and Little Bear Brook, as noted in the West Windsor Master Plan and former Natural Resources Inventory;
Archaeological sites on the Sarnoff property;
The Aqueduct Mills historic district, in West Windsor and Plainsboro;
The historic Covenhoven-Silvers-Logan House, in West Windsor;
The historic Princeton Operating Station in West Windsor.

In order to inform this process, further areas of investigation will need to include:

Redundant projects, including the proposed Route 92, and projects that will induce more trips, including the possible widening of Route 571;
The direct, indirect and cumulative impacts and effects on human health and the natural environment;
The appropriate horizons of the study's outcome (10 years and 20 years);
Conflicts with local land use plans;
An appropriate range of build-out scenarios;
Origins and destinations (not screen lines) of auto and non-auto trips now and in the future;
Consideration of a wider range of demand management measures than was studied in the Congestion Management System study, including parking management ordinances and parking cash out and transit pass employee benefit programs;
The determination of an acceptable or near-acceptable level of service for all modes;
Land development pattern type and intensity changes that will reduce auto trip demand, and to what extent, over the 10 and 20 year time frames;
Environmental, social and racial justice issues, especially regarding access to jobs;
The determination of whether personnel needing to access West Windsor emergency vehicles and the Medical Center at Princeton and sites in the western portion of the township are delayed and how they might be accommodated;
Whether elimination of the traffic signals along Rt. 1 in Penns Neck would actually improve safety and how, including an investigation of the type, severity and cause of crashes along Route 1 on at-grade intersections and grade-separated overpasses and on local roads crossing Route 1 in the Penns Neck area compared with records of accidents in other areas of Route 1, as suggested and for the reasons suggested in the Resource Systems Group critique of the Environmental Assessment (EA);
Other matters suggested for investigation by Resource Systems Group in the report on the EA;
Updated traffic and trip data, including origins and destinations, and an analysis according to the most recent Highway Capacity Manual (not 1985), with a clear description of how trips and traffic volumes are assigned to various alternative alignments and projects (slower traffic growth rate in 1998 not accounted for in prior study);
Updated noise projections, using updated model and updated road speeds and design parameters;
Future traffic volumes, based on updated economic, demographic and population trends and an appropriate travel demand model;
Future traffic volume forecasts for the proposed Millstone Bypass (the EA contained only volumes for Route 1, and for dissimilar alternatives, not the NJDOT then-preferred alternative);
Air quality study must conform to EPA guidance on location of receptors, modeled road widths, nearby roads, etc. and must be updated from 1996;
The roadway segment studied cannot be so small as to constitute segmentation under NEPA.

The ultimate range of solutions to be considered needs to consist of an appropriate mix of strategies. The solutions need to be designed to achieve the desired or near-desired level of service for all modes as determined by the group in the most cost-effective way with the least harm to the environment, historic and cultural resources, the neighborhoods, and the quality of life in the region. The solutions must be reasonable.