Plans are in the works for new trees to enhance the appearance of North Bend Road and Richwood Road in Boone County.
A multi-use path along North Bend Road and a stretch near the Richwood Road interchange will benefit from the bolstered greenspace presence, the Boone County Urban Forest Commission determined during its regular meeting on Monday.
“We’re in the process of getting all the design work,” Boone County Planning Commission Executive Director Kevin Costello said. “We have the construction drawings from the road improvements on Richwood Road, as well as we’re getting the drawings involving the multi-use path. We’re going to bunch all that together, come up with a number in terms of trees and a cost estimate.”
The Richwood Road interchange has a considerable concrete presence, Costello said.
“Between the new interchange, the roundabout and the SPUI, that was an area that we felt needed some landscaping,” Costello said. “There’s a couple of areas that we thought we’d put some trees in.”
A SPUI, or single-point urban interchange, is a roadway design created to help move large volumes of traffic through limited amounts of space safely. All four turning movements intersect at a common point.
The multi-use path tree project could aid an area filled with potential, Urban Forest Commission Technical Advisory Committee Member Robby Brockman said.
“The multi-use path is a real nice asset to the community,” Brockman said. “I feel like it would be beneficial to add a good number of shade trees, especially along some sections. There are some existing trees already in place in some areas of the multi-use path, so we don’t have to work on those quite as much, but there are other areas that could use some flowering trees to spruce up the appeal.”
Additionally, portions of the multi-use path will present challenges, Brockman said.
“There is quite a slope on many different areas,” Brockman said. “There’s also areas that are going to have standing water, so you have to be careful with tree selection. And there are some areas that are going to get a good amount of road salt. But in general, the area has potential to have a lot of trees.”