- Boone County’s first transportation plan update since 2017 establishes new infrastructure priorities and investment strategies through 2050.
- Officials say the county’s focus has shifted from planning for growth to managing the impacts of growth, including congestion caused by more than 75,000 daily commuters.
- The plan organizes projects into Tier 1, Tier 2 and long-range priorities, with the largest concentration of projects located in the Hebron/Burlington area.
Boone County has updated its countywide transportation plan for the first time since 2017.
When the previous plan was released, county officials concentrated on developing local infrastructure to support increased commercial and residential growth. This time, their focus shifted to managing the growth that had already occurred. The update was published in 2025.
Boone County Engineer Rob Franxman presented the Transportation Plan update to the Boone County Planning Commission on June 17. He had presented the plan to the Boone County Fiscal Court earlier in the spring.
Franxman told the planning commission that he and his team felt it was time to modernize the transportation plan, given Boone County’s continued population and workforce growth. Boone County published its previous transportation plan in 2017.
“Obviously, the population’s grown, the number of employment opportunities and income has grown, all these types of things, so we really got to the point where we thought it was a good time to take a look at the transportation plan,” Franxman said. “We had to modernize some things and address some things that have come about since back in 2017.”
The new plan reevaluates projects from the earlier document, incorporates public feedback and updated traffic modeling, and establishes a new set of Tier 1, Tier 2 and long-range transportation priorities intended to guide infrastructure investments through 2050.
According to Franxman’s presentation, Boone County has approximately 100,000 people working within its borders each day. However, roughly 27% of these workers live in Boone County. This means that more than 75,000 people travel to and from Boone County daily, straining the county’s major transportation corridors, particularly around the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, the interstate system and growing commercial areas.
Boone County Planning and Zoning Director Kevin Costello said that, historically, county officials had focused on long-term planning aimed at increasing the number of quality jobs for residents to work and live locally, thereby reducing the number of commuters.
“I mean, our goal at the time was we wanted people to live here and work here, so they don’t have to commute; that was the objective back in the 80s,” he said.
When comparing the 2017 plan with the updated plan, there are many similarities in core goals and initiatives, including improving overall roadway safety and reducing crashes, expanding countywide multimodal networks and connectivity and addressing congestion.
“What were the priorities or the needs that we needed to address?” Franxman asked. “Again, upgrade those key corridors, address the congestion, improve intersections – make them work better, expand the multimodal network: the sidewalks, bike lanes, multi-use paths, invest in rural safety, and rural road improvements.”
During the information-gathering stage of the update process, Franxman and county staff met with the public, officials from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, CVG and other major employers to identify Boone County’s most urgent transportation challenges.
County officials grouped the highest-priority infrastructure projects into Tier 1, meaning they are targeted for implementation within the next one to nine years. Tier 2 projects were deemed important but of lower priority. Improvements were expected over the next 10 to 19 years, supported by funding and partnerships. Lastly, Tier 3 includes projects deemed not ready for immediate investment, with funding to be sought 20 years from now.
Around three-quarters of the projects are in Tier 1 and Tier 2, with the Hebron/Burlington area highlighted as the area with the most projects, at 37, followed by Florence with 22, Richwood/Union with 20, western Boone County with 17 and Walton-Verona with 11. KYTC is responsible for 66 of the projects, while Boone County is responsible for 39.
To view a list of Boone County’s Tier 1 projects, click here. To view a list of its Tier 2 projects, click here.
