Last year, the Princeton Parent Teacher Organization Council (PTOC) launched ‘Walk and Wheel Wednesdays’, to try to encourage more families to leave the car behind when bringing their kids to school (Report: First Princeton “Walk & Wheel Wednesday” Happening This Week!). At the same time, PTOC launched a survey to try to understand why so few students walk or cycle to school in Princeton. 640 parents responded to the survey, representing over a quarter of the students enrolled at Princeton Public Schools.

The most common obstacle preventing students from walking or cycling to school was that the family lived “too far” from their school. But coming close behind was the problem of “traffic volume and speed”. The risk associated with crossing busy roads, and an absence of sidewalks and bike lanes, also showed up as top-five reasons why students do not walk or bike.

Interestingly, “weather” was only the 11-th most important issue preventing students from walking or cycling. “Having too much stuff to carry” was even less important. After this winter, it’s possible that more families would see “weather” as a problem, but in general, it is dangerous roads, not bad weather, that is expanding the car line.

Parents did have ideas about how to make streets safer for students to get to school without cars. The #1 suggestion was to add more protected bike lanes. Protected bike lanes have recently been installed next to the Princeton Shopping Center, for the first time in Princeton. Although the new bike lanes have triggered some grumbling in local Facebook groups, the parent survey shows that this kind of infrastructure is very valuable, and should be extended to other locations where it could help more students cycle safely to school.

More generally, parents saw “better traffic infrastructure” as the second-most valuable thing that the town could provide to boost walking and cycling. That suggestion was tied for second place with “provide more crossing guards”. The town has cut back on crossing guard patrols in recent years, in part because of a lack of people who want to work as crossing guards. Many intersections that formerly had crossing guards were reclassified so that students have to cross by themselves. That can be very challenging during the school run, when there are high volumes of traffic and a lot of drivers are rushing.

“More sidewalks” was another popular response to the question of what the town could do to make walking or cycling easier. The town is building a new sidewalk on Cherry Hill Road, which will make it easier for students up there to walk or cycle to school. Improvements to the sidepath on Rosedale Road have also been in planning by the town for many years. On March 18, Princeton assistant municipal engineer Jim Purcell will give a presentation on upcoming improvements that aim to make streets safer for walkers and cyclists. The meeting will be hosted by PTOC, and may give some insight into how the town hopes to make it easier for more students to walk or cycle to school.

Using school buses is also an option – but the same survey revealed that many parents think the bus comes too early or runs along a route that is too long. A lot of families clearly see driving their kids to school as the safest and most practical solution, but as more parents choose to drive, that makes roads even less safe for students who are walking or cycling. Princeton is a small town, and almost everybody lives within a couple of miles of their school, but the town has a lot of work to do to rebalance incentives to make walking and cycling the most appealing choice.

Related Materials (via princetonptoc.org):

• Full results of Princeton PTOC 2025 Travel To School survey
• Details of Jim Purcell Zoom webinar on Wednesday March 18, hosted by Princeton PTOC.
• Information about “Walk and Wheel Wednesdays”.

Note: this article was updated because Jim Purcell’s webinar about upcoming safety improvements has been rescheduled from February 24 to March 18.