The ongoing saga of what will happen with the Dinky train station on the Princeton University campus now includes the state Department of Transportation. NJDOT has come out in support of the school’s proposal to move the station to the south to make room for the university’s hoped-for arts district surrounding McCarter Theater.
Plans for the future of the Dinky, which connects Princeton University with Princeton Junction, run the gamut from replacing the train with rubber-wheeled vehicles to moving the Dinky station into Palmer Square. The idea to move the station 460 feet south toward Princeton Junction perhaps is the most polarizing, with as many supporters as opponents among residents.
One of the supporting residents is DOT commissioner James Simpson, who lives in Princeton Township. According to the Times of Trenton, an agreement dating back to the 1980s allows the university to move the Dinky station — and that all the university needs of DOT is to ask.
Recent talk among the Princeton Regional Planning Board speaks of the possibility of Dinky improvements.
Township mayor Bernie Miller has stated that Simpson and the DOT have no interest in that avenue, at least not unless the arts district plan is part of a greater arts/transit redevelopment.
