Traffic jam — Route 27 along Kendall Park

I was driving along Route 27 the other day when I came to a realization: The stretch between Finnegan’s Lane and Route 518 has all the traffic without any of the charm of Princeton Borough.

Rather than a quaint downtown — obviously, not something that can be manufactured from scratch — we have a series of strip malls on the Franklin side with closed supermarkets and sprawling parking lots and a bunch of residential developments, back turned as if they were shunning the road.

The problem comes from a series of bad decisions and shortsightedness by elected officials of both parties in both towns, residents and the state. The goal has been to avoid developing like Edison, rather than to craft a real plan for development and in the end we get a sort of Edison-lite — not as bad as that north-county town, but still haphazard and painfully annoying.

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet