Get ready for more road work. A lot more road work, if you live in Southwestern Butler County.

Residents and passersby of Southwestern Butler County are already all too familiar with the road construction taking place on Route 356 and Route 68, but the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation recently announced more projects for the area.

This will be inconvenient for motorists driving on the affected roads, but once the construction is done, hopefully the improvements will be worth the inconvenience.

Among the announced projects are a safety improvement project on Three Degree Road in Adams and Middlesex townships; plans for widening, drainage and intersection improvements and new traffic signals on Freedom Road; and bridge replacement projects in Callery and Adams Township.

The estimated completion dates of some of these projects is within 2025, while others stretch out to 2028.

PennDOT district executive Brian Allen said population growth in the southwestern quadrant of Butler County has pushed the department to consider adjusting area roads to deal with heavier traffic.

“At that time it was one of the fastest growing communities in the country, so we knew we needed to look at expanding,” he said, “but also trying to control access so as developments went in, it also didn’t outgrow what we were building.”

These costly projects are being done out of necessity — one-lane roads just don’t cut it when thousands of vehicles drive a stretch of road every hour. Ultimately, the roads will become more efficient for the loads they are carrying, we just have to wait — sometimes in heavier than normal traffic — for them to be done.

—ET