> My only gripe is that a lot of it is feeling a bit kick-starter-y

IMO the term "project goals" is quite misleading for what this actually is. A project goal is a system for one person (or a small group of people) to express that they'd like to work on something and ask for Rust project volunteers to commit ongoing time and effort to supporting them through code review, answering questions, etc. It doesn't mean that the Rust project itself has set the goal, or even necessarily endorsed it.

So it's not quite right to treat it as a formal roadmap for Rust, just a "there are some contributors interested in working on these areas".