Mayor seeks limit on freshman car owners

Each fall, entering freshmen bring many more college survival items than they need, lugging to campus stereos, clothing and of course, extra-long twin sheets. But if Princeton Borough Mayor Marvin Reed had his way they would leave their biggest possession — cars — at home.

Reed recently asked University officials to consider limiting the number of cars students bring, citing concerns about traffic congestion in town. He said he worries that University students with parking spots on Faculty Road are also parking their cars in town.

"It's one thing if the students just keep their cars there to use if they go home or for the weekend, but if the students are using their cars during the week, from one side of town to the other . . . the town just isn't planned for that amount of campus traffic," he said.

Public Safety issued 1,364 parking decals to graduate students and 1,385 to undergraduates this year, said Public Safety Crime Prevention Specialist Barry Weiser.

But Vice President for Public Affairs Robert Durkee '69 disagreed with Reed's perception of those students' traffic patterns.

"We don't think that cross-town traffic is a problem," Durkee said. "I don't want to convey a sense that we're not mindful of traffic. But we don't think that [students] are contributing [to traffic problems]."

He added that many students use cars for travel back home and extra-curricular activities.

Reed said the University should follow the example of Westminster Choir College of Rider University in banning freshman cars.

Walter Perry, dean of students at Westminster, explained that the administration decided two years ago not to allow freshmen to use cars, because of all groups on campus, they needed them least. That decision reduced the campus's parking load by roughly fifty cars, whose spots, Perry said, were promptly filled by community members taking classes at the college.

"Even when you create new spaces, they tend to get filled," he said.

Currently, the University has no plans to change parking policy, which allows members of every class to bring cars, Durkee said.

Instead, the administration is considering starting a "town-gown co-op shuttle service" to surrounding areas, which would serve graduate students along with undergraduates, said Pamela Hersh, director of community and state affairs for the University.

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The shuttle service would offer an alternative to students who might normally drive their own cars off campus.

Until the late 1960s, parking was not as student-friendly as it is now, Durkee said. He remembered that undergraduates were not allowed to park cars anywhere on campus — defined as an eight mile radius extending from the University.