The meeting drew a huge crowd of citizens and elected officials, including the mayors of Hopewell, Montgomery and Pennington, four Mercer County freeholders, Senator Bill Schluter and Assemblymen Leonard Lance and Joe Yuhas. The meeting was chaired by Alain Kornhauser, chairman of the regional planning board and a Princeton professor. Professor Kornhauser described the regional problem and outlined potential physical and operational remedies including lower speed limits and controls on truck size and weight on local streets. Kornhauser urged that the legislature return the latter controls to local authorities. Other remedies included reducing Turnpike tolls, tolling I-287, other trucking fees, increases in the Turnpike speed limit and restrictions on warehousing in the region.

Senator Schluter and Assemblyman Lance opposed the 65 mph speed limit for New Jersey. Assemblyman Yuhas suggested that speed limits be lowered on the affected roads, that weight limits be imposed on those highways, and argued against construction of I-95 through the Hopewell Valley.

Mercer County Freeholder President Joe Constance claimed that NJDOT agrees that speed limits on some roads should be reduced by 5 mph within thirty days. Constance was instrumental in getting the State Police to increase enforcement of laws governing trucks on these roadways over the past several months. There was broad support for these enforcement strategies at the forum.

Mercer County Freeholder Shirley Turner suggested rolling back 1991 toll increases on the NJ Turnpike to attract the trucks back to that roadway. Others suggested that the tolls were not the root of the problem, but that travel time and congestion savings were. Tri-State Transportation Campaign representative Ed Lloyd urged the group to advocate for weight-distance fees for all trucks, strict law enforcement, more local control, toll reform and increased incentives for and access to rail freight lines. He also informed the group that NJDOT's rail freight budget was cut from $3 million to $1 million by DOT's budget staffers, who blamed the downsized Transportation Trust Fund for the decrease. NJ DOT freight director Ted Matthews had been expecting full funding plus $2 million in discretionary funding for particular rail freight projects. The Campaign had lobbied for a specific set-aside for rail freight in the Trust Fund, which did not materialize.

The June 29 discussion was a start. The Trenton Times editorial board took up the problem this Wednesday. More meetings to hammer out a common response to the truck problem are planned.