KINGSTON – City officials and professionals from consultants GPI Wednesday night held the first in a series of public meetings concerning the Broadway/Grand Street Intersection improvement project, which will be an extension of the current Broadway Streetscapes Projects.
The project includes new traffic signaling, greenspace and will connect to the Streetscapes cyclist lane, in addition to the roadway infrastructure improvements.
The state awarded the city $750,000 the Department of Transportation’s Multi-modal Program and requires no local match.
Members of the public were welcomed to comment on the preliminary design stages of the street project, as well as the greenspace portion that will be located at the Broadway, Grand Street and Prince Street intersections, areas that include where the old post office was located and the vacant Planet Wings building.
Kingston Director of Grants Management Kristen Wilson said since the project is in its preliminary phase, there isn’t an estimate on the total cost.
“We hope that it will not be very much more than what we have from the state and as far as the cost for the landscaped area, that is unknown at this time because we are really at just the conceptual phase for that part of the project,” said she said.
Wilson added that based on public feedback and if there are no changes, there will not be another public meeting held on the street improvements portion of the project.
This was, however, the first time the city had conducted a meeting with immediate user feedback through digital polling. Some results of that polling had shown 78 percent who attended the meeting and participated in the poll were not city residents, 78 percent said they would feel safer as motorists with the new improvements, 90 percent said they would feel safer as cyclists, 90 percent said they would feel safer as pedestrians and no participants claimed to own, or operate, businesses within the city.
The public can still provide feedback at www.Engagekingston.com and the entire GPI presentation of the designs and concepts will be available there for public viewing.
