March 13, 2013

A Dissertation on Bicycle Paths, the New Hospital, And Other Cycling Issues, Leavened With Limerick

To the Editor:

Caryl Emerson’s March 6 letter suggesting a bicycle path to our Crystal Palace of a hospital in Plainsboro (“Providing Non-Motor Path to Hospital Would Be “Fine Community Service”) is reasonable and humane, but not very practical. The money would be better used to address general cycling issues in Princeton proper. The writer’s fortitude and stamina are admirable, but people visiting hospitals are mostly sick, old, and weak (or all three), and I doubt that many persons would essay this long and tortuous route even if they felt up to it. When the hospital was a half-mile away from us on Witherspoon, I biked there myself, but even then I rarely saw other bikes tethered to the racks.

Still, I’m sympathetic to Emerson’s points. Princeton should be a biker’s paradise, but instead it’s the lower depths. I biked from the University to Hickory Court and back almost every day for 40 years and had no end of close calls. Wiggins, the only real alternative to unbikeable Nassau, was and still is a nightmare. Not all streets can have a bike path or lane, but secondary main drags like Wiggins and others (like Valley Road) could and ought to.

Emerson’s comments on lower Harrison apply to a majority of our streets, whose potholes would certainly win a Mercer County contest. Part of the problem is the poor quality of resurfacing. Walnut, Moore, and Jefferson, my main avenues home if I survive Wiggins, have been blacktopped several times since I’ve lived here, but their potholery is almost permanent. Nassau has better paving and, though it isn’t for cyclists, it does deserve its plaudit in the limerick below, which contrasts it with Route 27. But don’t bike on either of these roads, or on 206 either!

Our Nassau Street is pure heaven,

And many a life does it leaven.

But it all falls apart

As it northward does start

And turns into Route 27.

 

Charles E. Townsend

Hickory Court