Expanded Park and Ride Discussions Ongoing

The South Brunswick Township Council is continuing to explore options for adding an expanded park and ride service to the community.  Discussions are ongoing to provide express routes to and from New York City and the Princeton Junction train station twice each weekday.

While the township originally was focused on adding two new facilities along Route 1 near the Beekman Road intersection, and another near the Independence Way intersection, officials are now focusing on getting approval for the Independence Way park and ride due to concerns about Beekman Road's traffic problems.

The park-and-ride at Beekman Road would be constructed near the entrance to Beech Woods Park.  The location would allow use of the existing parking spots at the park, in addition to a planned 85 parking spots that could potentially be added for the park-and-ride.

"I'm totally against this, adding 80 cars (to Beekman Road) no matter what time of day would make things worse," said Councilman Joseph Camarota.  "Adding that volume of traffic to both ends of Beekman Road is recipe for disaster.  I've been against it from day one and I'm still against it."

Mayor Frank Gambatese said intersection improvements would have to be completed to Beekman Road and Route 27 before the park and ride could be considered.

"We have the money in place (for the Beekman intersection improvements), the design is done, and we sent a request to the (state Department of Transportation) for approval," he said.  "Every time we think we have it, there's a change in supervisors or managers of the department and it gets stalled again.  We just can't get them to sign off."

Gambatese said the township engineer expects to get approval to begin work on improving the intersection within the next few weeks.

"We need to get that intersection fixed because it's horrendous," he said.  "It's a small two-lane road that has all this traffic making various turns and going to the shopping center across the street in Franklin.  The traffic empties into that intersection and it's terrible.  It doesn't make any sense what Franklin did, and they're the ones who caused the problem."

He added that a plan previously in place for the intersection that would've improved traffic flow was nixed by Franklin.

"We had the plans in place and the okay from Franklin to redesign the intersection to go around the gas station to meet up with the road out of Franklin, so we would have a constant flow of traffic," Gambatese said.  "Franklin got opposition from the people who live in the Hovanian development and then they wouldn't let us do it.  So now we want to widen that intersection and put in a different lighting system so people can make a left or a right on the arrow."

Residents of Beekman Road have spoken at previous council meetings about the negative impact adding more traffic to the roadway would cause.  

The park and ride project is to be funded by a $4 million federal transportation grant awarded to South Brunswick in 2006. The addition of the park-and-ride facilities would help to ease traffic on Route 1, while also alleviating parking issues at the train station in Princeton Junction, according to Public Affairs Coordinator Ron Schmalz.

"We're trying to do something good for the residents so we certainly don't want to put something in that's just going to make people upset," Schmalz said.  "We looked at about 15 properties around town and they all had constraints due to wetlands or Green Acres protection."

The council must have a plan in place by June or risk losing the grant funding.  New Jersey Transit spokesman Tom Clark estimated 150 to 200 South Brunswick residents park their cars at the Princeton Junction train station.  By expanding an existing bus route to include the proposed new park-and-rides, residents would be able to leave their cars in town rather than driving to Princeton Junction or New Brunswick.

Gambatese said the council hopes to enlarge the plan for the Independence Way park and ride to allow for 150 parking spots, with the plan for the Beekman Road park and ride contingent on intersection improvements.

"I'm committed to going for the Independence Way plan," Camarota said.  "Let's get a plan to NJT and see if we can put the money into building that."