Wall Street, in Kingston's uptown

KINGSTON – In recognition of the city’s streets as not just a place meant for accommodating fast moving traffic the Kingston Common Council passed a resolution Tuesday evening in support of a Complete Streets Policy to guide future growth throughout the city.

According to Acting Council President Majority Leader Alderman William Reynolds, the original street design, having been done in the early 19th century absent of the need to accommodate modern issues, should be reworked to coincide with the needs and desires of the community.

“The problem is that we have a quality of life issue that affects a lot of cities like the City of Kingston where old cities have vehicular traffic flying through them and really disrupting the quality of life of the people who live there,” he said. “So if we can pull back a little bit and recognize that the streets are something more than just something for motor vehicles to fly through then we’re going in the right direction.”

The redesigning of city streets would include better accommodation for pedestrians and cyclists as well as street and sidewalk beautification, he said, and is a process that will be done using a significant amount of community input.

Kingston resident Gregg Swanzey spoke in support of the policy saying that it will help bring the kind of growth to Kingston that people are looking for.

“I think it’ll help bring people together and give them an opportunity to talk about the things that they’d like to see in the City and it’ll allow for us to transform the City in a way that will make it more walkable, bikeable, it’ll be more accessible to everyone, it’ll be more livable, and that’s good for everybody.”

Adoption of this policy is just the first step in the process to renovating the city’s streets, but Reynolds said that he is already excited to see what can be done throughout the upcoming year.

“The committee that proposed this idea in the first place were all citizens, they weren’t tied to city government, so this is a grassroots campaign and will continue to be as we move forward,” he said.