For a long time now, transportation has been a big issue in Kingston, second only to the housing crisis. City government’s warm embrace of the “Complete Streets” concept, which calls for thoroughfares to be designed in such a way as to provide some equity and more safety to cyclists and pedestrians at the expense of cars, has transformed the way people get around town. Thankfully, our local rash of pedestrians and cyclists being killed by cars has come to what we hope is a permanent end, but people still get injured all too frequently in a city which at times seems way over-automobiled, to coin a phrase.

The next step of Mayor Steve Noble’s ongoing quest for a safer city streetscape was unveiled last week when the mayor announced he would ask the Common Council to approve reducing the citywide speed limit from its current 30 mph to 25 mph. In his memo to the council, the mayor cited statistics from the Governors Highway Safety Association which show that the lower speed limit would significantly decrease the number of drivers traveling over 33 mph, a threshold where the chance of a pedestrian struck by a vehicle suffering serious injuries jumps to 50 percent, compared with 25 percent in a 25-mph collision.

While some have accused Noble of imposing changes to the roads that nobody wants or likes — the Broadway roundabout was the state’s doing, not his — in this case, the mayor said, the people are squarely behind him. “In the three ward meetings that I’ve had so far, the number one concern has been speeding in neighborhoods,” the mayor said. “I want Kingston residents to know that I share this concern.”

Is this, then, an idea whose time has come? It would seem so, as any argument against it your Editorial Team can think of reduces to, “Waaah I wanna drive faster!” — understandable in a way, but hardly compelling. Spare us, please, the canard about the city wanting to make more money via speeding tickets; as anyone who’s gotten one in recent years can tell you, the vast bulk of the fine ends up in Albany’s coffers, not Kingston’s.

Besides being the right thing to do, the proposal underscores Kingston’s continuing willingness to place itself ahead of the curve when it comes to systemic change. (Underscoring this willingness was Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha’s primary win two weeks ago; Shrestha’s dedication to the big-picture kind of change clearly resonates with a lot of voters.)

There are few things more essential to a city than how its residents get around. It’s a huge problem in New York City, especially now that planned repairs to its barely functioning subway system are now shelved thanks to the governor pulling the plug on the congestion pricing plan, from which the money for the repairs was to come. Whether the move will actually help Democratic congressional candidates in the Hudson Valley — Kathy Hochul’s unspoken motive was to take the unpopular plan off the political playing field where control of Congress may well be decided this fall — remains to be seen. What we know already is that mass transit in the city will only get more difficult to deal with.

Kingston is, of course and thank God, a different story. We enjoy an eminently walkable and bikeable city, made even more so by improved sidewalks and rail trails. There’s a functional bus system — we remind everyone to take the survey for UCAT’s Route Optimization Plan, which ends on Friday — as well as a decent Uber/Lyft infrastructure. Considering all this, plus the hassle of parking and the expense of upkeep, do people in Kingston even need cars?

The answer is no and yes. Kingston has a lot of needs covered in-city; if one had to, one could get by well enough without having to use any kind of private transportation. But while Kingston is non-driver friendly, the rest of the Hudson Valley isn’t. Locales are far-flung and while one can technically walk or bike to the Ulster Avenue business strip if need be, it’s not safe at all to do so. While the county’s Nature Bus program is helping to get people who can’t or won’t drive to some of Ulster’s natural wonders, if you want to go up the country, you need a car for that.

We don’t know what the next step will be in Kingston’s transportation transformation. We expect the emphasis on mass transit to continue, as well as the upgrading of more city streets to get closer to “complete.” Each car owner will have to judge for themselves whether it’s worth it to keep their autos, but considering the grip that the freedom of driving has on the American psyche, we don’t expect the private vehicle population to drop all that much.

We do have an idea, though, which will offer flexibility to those who don’t have a car: a joint city-county initiative to pay for the car-less to use ridesharing to get where they want to go when they want to be there. If the idea of sending public money to Uber is unappealing, perhaps UCAT can put something together on its own, using a fleet of electric vehicles driven by volunteers. Or maybe skip the government altogether and make it an all-volunteer grassroots kind of a thing.

Truly, figuring out transportation is the work of a lifetime, with many twists, turns and experiments along the way. But considering how seriously we take this issue, both for the sake of safety and reducing emissions, we wouldn’t be surprised if the solution to this complex problem is found first in Kingston.