Candidate’s Forum – Joshua Leinsdorf
The recent tragic death of a 14 year old on Alexander Road
demonstrates, yet again, the need to merge local government operations into
functionally meaningful units.
Princeton Borough has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars over the
past year repaving Alexander Road and improving safety by installing a traffic
signal. So why was the old, obviously
treacherous, downhill S curve leading to a narrow bridge left intact?
Simply because it is in West Windsor. Even though the Mayor’s son had an accident
on that turn six years ago, West Windsor’s elected officials have little to
gain from spending scarce tax dollars on an expensive project that primarily
benefits people who live and work in Princeton. This same kind of boundary anomaly is the reason the Snowden Lane
sidewalk became an issue. The houses
are in the borough, but the street in front of them is in the township.
Hundred-year-old municipal boundary lines have become an
obstacle to rational and efficient delivery of government services. This is proved by the fact that Princeton
Borough and Princeton Township, both with 100% Democratic-controlled governing
bodies, could not work together to build 1200 feet of sidewalk. The Princetons and West Windsor have been
unable to implement plans to ease the horrendous traffic congestion around
Route 1. If New Jersey needs a constitutional convention, it is to deal with
the historical structure of the state’s 566 municipalities, 21 counties and over
600 school districts.
Boundary lines are only part of the reason for the
catastrophe on Alexander Road last week.
That disaster took the life of the third teenager and seventh young
person to die in car crashes on wet or snow covered roads in Mercer County in
the last two-and-a-half years. The
United States as a whole suffers, annually, the equivalent of 15 World Trade
Center attacks in traffic fatalities: 1 in 8 is a pedestrian. Yet, elected officials of both parties act
like motor-vehicle carnage is normal, natural and unavoidable.
We need to teach crucial portions of the physics
curriculum, like friction and the counterintuitive relationship between speed
and force, at the middle and elementary school level, before kids drive.
Excessive reliance on cars for all transportation needs
to be changed. Bus route maps and
schedules should be posted on every bus and in every shelter. Benches need to be installed at every bus
stop, so pedestrians have a place to rest, too. Seventy-year-old bus routes need to be modified to go where
people need to travel.
New Jersey needs a massive sidewalk-building campaign. Why is there a sidewalk all the way down
Harrison Street that stops at the West Windsor border?
And the visibility of pedestrian crosswalks needs to be
improved. The three crosswalks on
Washington Road linking the Princeton University campus are good models. Children, old people, and the handicapped
should be able to cross streets without risking their lives. Highway deaths and high energy prices are
not accidents.
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