By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton officials will spend the next several months to a year investigating ways to slow down traffic before issuing a report that will go to the full council to consider sometime in 2017.
A committee that includes municipal staff and others will look at the pros and cons of all the options that towns have available to them. Councilwoman Jenny Crumiller, a committee member, said Monday that those will include narrowing traffic lanes and bumping out sidewalks at intersections, among other things.
The town also will re-examine its self-imposed policy against having speed bumps, a restriction in place because emergency vehicles cannot get over them.
“We’re going to revisit that,” Ms. Crumiller said.
The committee is acting in response to an often-cited quality of life concern that Ms. Crumiller and other officials routinely get about speeding. She said the problem is town wide, not confined to one section of the community.
“We hear it from everyone,” she said.
The town already has traffic-claming methods, like striping Hamilton Avenue to create narrower travel lanes, said town engineer Deanna L. Stockton on Monday. Also, the town uses speed radar signs on a rotating basis; the signs flash a driver’s speed — a popular and effective device, Ms. Crumiller said.
Princeton Police also do traffic enforcement, and will announce where they intend to target specific spots. For instance, the department announced in May it was doing enforcement at Jefferson Road and Henry Avenue.
During the first five months of this year, the department had issued 475 speeding tickets — an average of 95 per month — according to a report summarizing police activity.
Ms. Crumiller admitted that she sometimes speeds when she drives, although usually not in town but more when travelling on the highway.
“I try not to speed,” she said, “but it’s very tempting to do. And I sometimes do.”
