Regional Planning Board votes against ordinance preserving Dinky right of way

The Borough sent the Regional Planning Board its recommendation last month, but as recently as this week, the Borough attorney informed council members that the ordinance, even if enacted, would have no impact on the University’s plans. On Thursday night, the Planning Board found the ordinance inconsistent with the Princeton master plan.

Borough Mayor Yina Moore ’79, Borough Councilwoman Jenny Crumiller and Janet Stern supported the ordinance at the meeting. Moore and Crumiller are also members of the body that drafted the ordinance in the first place.

Planning Board Attorney Allen Porter explained that since the adoption of the “time of submission” rule, an application is governed by ordinances in effect when an application is filed. The University filed its application to the Planning Board before this ordinance was created.

“In my judgment [the ordinance] would not be effective against the University,” Porter said.

According to Planning Director Lee Solow, the right of way proposed in the ordinance is a modified path from the current path that goes through Lots 1, 4 and 39. Lot 1 would have to be purchased from the University since it is not part of the original right of way.

“It would appear that the right of way covers all three of those lots,” Solow said. “Based on the ordinance we assume that there is some expansion of the right of way.”

Porter added that in order to preserve the right of way, the University has to be compensated for the land.

University Vice President and Secretary Bob Durkee ’69 said at the meeting that besides the rule of submission, the new terminus will be slightly east of the old terminus, allowing new tracks to be put in place while still using the old ones. These new tracks will not connect to the old tracks and to the old terminus.

“When the Dinky terminus is relocated ... this right of way will not connect to the new terminus. There will be a gap of several hundred feet between the right-of-way and the terminus,” he said. “So the proposed right of way would literally not connect to the new terminus.”

Operations Research and Financial Engineering Professor Alain Kornhauser and residents Peter Marks and Kip Cherry, among others, said the University does not, in fact, own the right of way.

“Under the 1984 agreement with New Jersey Transit, the public already owns the right of way,” Cherry said.

For Kornhauser, the right of way is public, and the University would actually have to buy it.

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“The current value of the public passenger easement, owned by us the public, is between 100 million and half a billion dollars,” he said.

Marks added he would not oppose “several thousand dollars” in taxation in order to acquire the land and keep a public right of way.

The only member of the audience who spoke in support of moving the Dinky was Chip Crider GS ’79, who said the ordinance was “myopic, one-sided and just nasty.”

“We could have worked with the University from the beginning and ended on a super-duper transportation system, but we didn’t,” he said.

Durkee noted that the University owns the land, and consequently, the right of way. The easement only provides access to NJ Transit to operate the Dinky. He added that NJ Transit does not want to keep the easement after the Dinky is moved.

“The University owns all the land that we are talking about. When the University purchased the land in 1984 from New Jersey Transit, it provided New Jersey Transit with an easement for access to this property for the purpose to provide rail service,” Durkee explained.

No representative of New Jersey Transit spoke at the meeting.

The ordinance will be discussed again by the Borough Council on its meeting on May 22, which can still approve it despite the Planning Board’s recommendation against doing so.