CRANBERRY TWP — Four southwestern Butler County communities are teaming up for new initiative to make local streets safer and more accessible for pedestrians and cyclists.

The township will partner with Jackson Township, Harmony and Zelienople in an effort to ensure safer traveling paths through the Southwest Butler Multi-Municipal Safety Action Plan.

“We’ll be looking at critical intersections or safety related improvements that are necessary along pedestrian and transportation corridors throughout those municipalities,” said township manager Dan Santoro. “So we’ll be doing it together with an engineering firm.”

Cranberry received a grant from a U.S. Department of Transportation program known as Safe Streets and Roads for All, or SS4A, to develop the plan.

At a meeting on Thursday, supervisors approved a $305,000 contract with AECOM, an infrastructure consulting firm, to begin the process.

The grant will cover 80% of the cost, while the four municipalities will share in the remaining 20% match cost to fully fund the plan, according to Santoro.

The agreement outlines eight tasks that AECOM will work to complete alongside the four municipalities.

Those tasks, in order of a chronological timeline, include: project management, public and stakeholder engagement; data collection; safety data and policy analysis; community impact assessment review; completion of a leadership, goals and implementation matrix; an administrative draft and final plans; and an executive summary and fact sheet.

The public and stakeholder engagement part of the plan intends to keep residents informed and engaged with a website, online survey, social media and two public meetings, including one that will be a listening session and another for an overview of the final plan.

Additionally, AECOM will seek to gather key transportation, demographic and socioeconomic data throughout the process, per the services agreement.

Those will include PennDOT crash data from the Pennsylvania Crash Information Tool, local crash data from local police departments and the Cranberry Township Traffic Operations Center, average annual daily traffic counts from PennDOT, U.S. Census demographic and socioeconomic data, and existing and planned land use and development data.

The project is expected to be completed sometime next March, according to information from the agreement.

Cranberry’s board of supervisors meeting scheduled for Thursday has been canceled.