Butler County receives $20M for Route 228 improvement

After working for nearly 30 years on improving Route 228, Butler County officials celebrated Thursday when they received news that the county has been approved for a $20 million federal grant for the last pieces of the Gateway 228 road improvement project.

The federal Department of Transportation announced the first round of grants under the

Trump administration’s Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development program. The program is designed to help fund transportation projects that have an economic importance in rural areas.

The grant will be used for projects on Route 228 in the east and west parts of the county. About 65 percent will be used to realign and widen to four lanes a 1.5-mile area in the Balls Bend area near Route 8, and about 35 percent will be used to add turn lanes, medians, connecting access roads, and pedestrian/bicycle facilities at the Haine School intersection west of Route 19, where the highway is known as Freedom Road.

The work is part of the $270 million Gateway 228 project that began in the 1980s to improve the 26.4mile highway and, with this grant, the remaining projects should be finished by 2025, said Leslie Osche, chairwoman of the Butler County commissioners. The highway is a major east-west link across the county from Route 8 in Middlesex to Route 19 in Cranberry.

About $136.5 million worth of projects have been completed over the years, and the remaining work is either under construction or in final design.

“Route 228 has been piecemealed since the 1980s,” Ms. Osche said. “But that’s the way we had to do it. If we waited [until all the money was available], it could have been another 30 years until we finished it.”

Commissioner Kim Geyer said the county concentrated on the highway’s importance in moving freight when officials joined state Transportation Secretary Leslie Richards at a meeting with federal officials. More than $27 billion in freight used by more than 11,000 businesses is moved on the highway, which has direct interchanges with the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Interstate 79.

“This is an economic corridor not only in our county but in all of southwestern Pennsylvania,” Ms. Geyer said.

Ms. Osche noted that this project hasn’t been a matter of building the highway to spur economic growth. The southern part of Butler County has been one of the fastest growing areas of the country despite some inadequate roads.

“This is being built out of necessity because the growth has already happened,” Commissioner Kevin Boozel said. “A lot of private money has gone into Route 228 over the years.”

The Balls Bend portion of the project also will smooth out several dangerous curves that don’t meet current design standards. The average crash rate in that area is more than double the average on all other roads across the state.