|
The City of Kingston has been awarded a $240,000 planning and design grant from the Department of Transportation’s Reconnecting Communities Pilot program to reconfigure US Route 9-W.
The City will conduct a feasibility study for reducing the 9-W highway from four to two lanes, removing a partial clover interchange, adding Complete Streets features, adding additional intersections, and more.
Mayor Noble said, “During the unfortunate Urban Renewal period, the large four-lane 9-W highway was built, bisecting our community. We believe the highway was overbuilt for the City’s traffic needs and creates an unnecessary barrier to connectivity, non-vehicular transportation, economic development, and social equity. We are interested in seeing what alternatives we might find to reducing the footprint of this route, and bringing now disparate parts of our community back together. I want to thank Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Representative Pat Ryan for their support for Kingston receiving this funding from a very competitive grant process.”
Bartek Starodaj, Director of Housing Initiatives, said “This is a transformative opportunity for the city to think how the redesign of the 9-W arterial could address the physical and social divides created by urban renewal and bring new housing and economic opportunities throughout the current 9-W corridor.”
Reconnecting Communities program awards are designed to re-establish routes between communities that were cut off by transportation infrastructure decades ago, leaving entire neighborhoods without easy access to opportunities, employment and key resources like schools, medical offices, and places of worship. Read the full announcement here.
| 
