Committee backs one-way street near two schools

KINGSTON, N.Y. >> A Common Council committee has endorsed turning Burhans Boulevard into a one-way street as part of an effort to make walking to school safer for children.

During a meeting Wednesday night, the Public Safety/General Government Committee adopted a resolution to allow only southbound traffic on the short street, from Alcazar Avenue to Lucas Avenue.

The resolution must still be adopted by the full council, which meets next on April 4.

Residents of the area initially expressed concern about the one-way plan being included in the city’s Safe Routes to Schools project. Mayor Steve Noble and Alderwoman Lynn Eckert, D-Ward 1, later met with residents to discuss the issue. City Engineer Ralph Swenson told the committee on Wednesday that about six households were represented at that meeting and that Noble went over the history of the project, which started at the end of 2010.

“The consensus of opinion at the meeting was that if it was going to go oneway, they wanted it oneway downhill [toward Lucas] rather than one-way uphill,” Swenson said. The engineer said that was the opposite of what was in the design for the overall project, but that the switch merely would require changing the location of some signs.

Burhans Boulevard, which is in Eckert’s ward, runs along the southwestern edge of Forsyth Park.

“This is a park road that we are adding a sidewalk and greenspace to,” Swenson told the Public Safety/ General Government Committee. He said the city could not just widen the road in that area to accommodate two lanes of traffic and the sidewalk because there is a great reluctance on the part of the Federal Highway Administration to transfer openspace parkland to a transportation use.

Most of the funding for the Safe Routes to Schools project is coming from the federal agency, funneled through the state Department of Transportation.

The installation of new sidewalks on and near Burhans Boulevard, which is near Harry L. Edson Elementary School and J. Watson Bailey Middle School, is one element of the project.

A concrete sidewalk on Burhans is to run 300 feet from Lucas Avenue to Alcazar Avenue. There also is to be a 600-foot asphalt walkway connecting Alcazar to Merilina Avenue along the edge of Forsyth Park.

Pedestrian improvements also are to be made

on Hurley Avenue and Joy’s Lane, near Edson and Bailey; as well as in the areas of George Washington and John F. Kennedy elementary schools.

The project also will include pedestrian signals at Washington Avenue’s intersections with Lucas Avenue, Main Street, Pearl Street and

Linderman Avenue; a “traffic-calming hump” on Joy’s Lane; curb cuts at all four corners at Murray Street and Delaware Avenue, as well as on Gross Street, near Kennedy school; improvements to the pedestrian signal at the Murray-Delaware intersection; a crosswalk at the intersection of Quarry Street and Hurley Avenue near Bailey; and crosswalk improvements at Wall and Franklin streets and at

Fair and Henry streets near George Washington school.

The $650,000 contract

for the entire Safe Routes project was awarded to Sun-Up Enterprises Inc. of Wappingers Falls.