FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 28, 2026
City of Kingston Releases RFP for Reconfiguring 9W Study
KINGSTON, NY – Mayor Steven T. Noble is pleased to announce that the City of Kingston has released a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a multidisciplinary consultant for the Reconnecting Communities: 9W Reconfiguration Study.
In 2025, the City of Kingston was awarded $240,000 from the US Department of Transportation’s Reconnecting Communities planning grant to engage in 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, “We are excited to begin the RFP process for a consultant to help us see what might be possible for reducing the footprint of this route, and bringing now disconnected parts of our community back together. Through a comprehensive design and community engagement process, the consultant will help us envision ways to reconnect neighborhoods separated by Route 9W, while ensuring the highway maintains its level of service. It is clear that the 9W corridor through Kingston was overbuilt for the City’s traffic needs and creates an unnecessary barrier to connectivity, pedestrian access, economic development, and social equity. We look forward to seeing the possibilities to correct these historical errors.”
The study area includes the 1.9 miles of Route 9W traversing the City of Kingston along with a 0.4-mile segment in the Town of Esopus and a 0.1-mile segment in the adjacent Town of Ulster. Priorities of the project include safety for all users, mobility and accessibility across modes, economic development and housing potential, environmental impacts, cost and constructability.
Bartek Starodaj, Director of Housing Initiatives, said, “In 1976, an editorial in the Daily Freeman opposing the construction of 9W said that its construction will ‘cut through the downtown area, removing nearby 100 properties from the city’s already strained tax roles and making it even harder than it is now to get around downtown by foot.’ The editorial called for construction and planning efforts to stop ‘before the damage was irreversible.’ Exactly 50 years later, this is a transformative opportunity for the city to think how the redesign of the 9W arterial could address the physical and social divides created by urban renewal and bring new housing and economic opportunities throughout the current 9W corridor.”
The RFP can be found on BidNet. More information at https://engagekingston.com/reconnecting-communities-9w-reconfiguration-study.
The Reconnecting Communities program was designed to re-establish routes between communities in areas 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.