By Patricia A. Scheyer
NKyTribune reporter
Boone County Fiscal Court approved the first steps toward widening Porter Road in Boone County as the commissioners voted this week to award the bid for the widening project to Riegler Blacktop for the price of $1,307,120.49.
The planned estimated cost of the project came to $1.75 million, so the initial observation is that the cost will definitely be under budget.
“This is an exciting day,” said Boone County Judge Executive Gary Moore. “A few years ago when we were setting tax rates, we decided to create the Rural Roads Fund, and the Rural Roads Fund was to begin to address our county rural roads. We often hear from constituents, taxpayers, who say, hey, we live out in the county, and we may not have water, and we have narrow county roads. In this case, Porter Road came to the top because of the number of vehicles per day that travel the road that doesn’t have two lane width for vehicles to pass safely.”
He said he recently drove the road at school time, and happened to meet a school bus.
“We both were off the road onto the gravel shoulder in order to pass each other,” Moore said, using gestures to indicate the difficulty.
He said Boone County is very progressive, and they have the money to be able to do a better job on these narrow county roads. He indicated that this program is not intended to make the roads super highways or anything like that, and indeed the recommended upgrade is only to the minimum standard.
The improvements will take the road from 16 feet to 22 feet in width, enough for two good lanes and shoulders, and enough to accommodate a school bus or a fire truck in addition to cars.
Moore said they know the road is long and straight, and they will use some engineering skills to install safety features to make sure that the widened road does not encourage more speeding than is already present on the road.
“Lastly, we heard from residents that, through the years, either they planted, or someone else planted, trees in the county right of way,” Moore explained. “There is no private property that will be impacted on this. Any improvements that are being done are within the county right of way.”
If there should be a tree in the right of way, it could be impacted, he said, but they will do their best to save the trees.
“By the way, Porter is the first one, there are several others that are on deck, this is to address as many of our rural county roads that are unsafe or need improvement as we can,” Moore said.
Assistant County Administrator Rob Franxman said there are definitely two more roads, Eads and Wolper, that are on the list. The roads were determined in December of 2022 by a data driven project which evaluated several safety issues on about 35 different roads, and Porter Road rose to the top of the list.
“This project, in and of itself, is approximately 8500 feet from Ky 14 to Bergamot Road,” said Franxman. “The road will be paved from 16 to 22 feet and for the most part that widening will be split with half on each side.”
He said there will be some places where they will have to take all the widening from one side. He and his crew have met with residents who live on the road, and he stipulated that the project is flexible and they are open to tweaking it one way or another if need be. They have told the contractors that they want to minimize impact as much as possible.
Wayne and Janice Ryan came to the meeting concerned because they found out that six feet of the widened road will come off their side of the road, and it will conflict with the new driveway they had put in. Judge Moore said they will definitely look at the situation again, and see what can be done.
Franxman said that the completion date will be November of 2024, so they won’t start the project until next year so they don’t start the project and then have to wait through the winter before finishing it. He estimates it will take about three to four months in total time.
“I will be down there with the contractor before they start,” said Judge Moore. “Once again, we’ve seen projects where the contractors just show up and bulldoze the whole thing. That’s not going to happen on this project.”
He said people have asked him if there have been any fatalities on the road, and he said he doesn’t know of any, but he doesn’t want to wait for one. Moore said even one accident where people might be injured is too many.
“Rob and I will be down there before they start,” Moore said. “There’s some beautiful trees along that road. It’s a beautiful road, it’s a beautiful country drive, and the trees are part of what makes it beautiful. We want to keep it that way.”