Tuesday brought to a close a decades-long saga on Butler County's transportation front with the opening of the final ramp of the $44 million Cranberry Connector project.

The message emanating from the project is that persistence pays.

If the county had merely thrown up its hands in frustration and turned its attention to other things that were deemed more likely to be attained, the connector would not now be in place. Some other part of the state would eventually have been the recipient of the $44 million outlay that transformed the connector dream into connector reality. Some other part of the state that might not have been shortchanged on road construction and repairs, as was Butler County's unfortunate fate for so many years, might have acquired boasting rights for yet another highway accomplishment.

While it's true that the connector is by no means a cure-all for Cranberry's vehicle congestion and in actuality is only a small part of what this county needs overall in terms of highways, its importance cannot be overstated. Directly linking Interstate 79 to the Pennsylvania Turnpike will provide ongoing relief to Cranberry's Route 19 business zone, which hasn't yet seen the last of its growth - or the last of its growth in traffic volume.

Cranberry can now truly be regarded as a transportation link for vehicles with other destinations, rather than a transportation migraine.

The project is an important accomplishment for all of the officials who worked on its behalf. Many millions of dollars were saved from the project's initial cost estimates without sacrificing the project's vital components.

The cost of the original design was about $84 million. Modifications to the original plans brought the estimated cost down to $68 million.

The project's total cost became even more manageable as a result of further modifications to the original plans and a favorable bidding experience.

In the end, this project, which was put on hold - and, indeed, placed in jeopardy - in the early 1990s because of highway-funding shortfalls defied the pessimists who felt that the state would find some "justification" for not building it.

That pessimism was put to rest - and persistence was victorious - in October 1997 when the state gave the go-ahead for the project to move forward.

On that day in 1997, then-12th District state Rep. Pat Carone commented that Cranberry "residents have been waiting too long for some relief from the growing traffic congestion, congestion which was only going to get worse. This project will finally allow them to move about more freely in their own community," she said.

While the connector hasn't made travel in Cranberry like a drive in the country, it will achieve what former state transportation secretary Bradley Mallory indicated during the groundbreaking in February 2002 for the connector's final phase - joining the seemingly natural flow of Interstate 79 and the turnpike. It will keep I-79 and turnpike traffic with no intentions of stopping in Cranberry out of the Cranberry business district.

So, in the final analysis, the connector project has provided an important message to Butler County: Persistence similar to that which engulfed the Cranberry effort must be exercised in regard to other important county needs.

Success might not come via a superhighway, but it won't happen at all if caught up in a traffic jam of pessimism.

- J.R.K.