PITTSBURGH — A new committee will seek to improve transportation in a 10-county area that includes Butler County.

The Regional Transportation Alliance of Southwestern Pennsylvania is a public-private partnership designed to promote discussion about the future of transportation in the region.

The 22-member committee includes public officials and corporate executives.

The county has two representatives on it:

n Brian Heery, president and chief executive officer of Mitsubishi Electric Power Products, is a co-chair. The company has its office in Warrendale less than 1 mile from Cranberry Township.

n Kim Geyer, assistant to Butler County commissioner Bill McCarrier.

The committee, which was announced Wednesday by the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, has its first task to identify transportation priorities, a news release said.

To do that it will survey more than 700 groups in October and November to list critical transportation problems and ways to address them.

Those groups will include chambers of commerce, colleges, school districts, top 10 private employers, tourism agencies and labor unions.

The surveys will ask the groups to name their top two transportation issues in the region and ways to solve them, Geyer said.

For Butler County, Geyer said she expects many of the survey responses to focus on Route 228 and the need for infrastructure improvements in the southern portion of the county.

Getting state or federal money through the alliance could help the county’s roads catch up to recent growth, she said.

“If we can get some road infrastructure, that makes it easier to access middle and northern parts of our county and at the same time address all the housing and economic development going on in the southern part,” she said.

Another area of concern likely to come up is Route 356 in the Sarver area, which could use improvements, she said.

The group should help the region find funding for transportation projects, in addition to the money allocated statewide through taxes and public-private partnerships by Act 89.

“This is to build upon that, to help us to identify new funding mechanisms, beyond Act 89,” she said.

Groups interested in receiving a survey can contact Carly Dobbins-Bucklad at cdobbins@alleghenyconference.org.

The committee also covers Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Lawrence, Washington and Westmoreland counties and Pittsburgh.

For information about the committee, visit regionaltransportationalliance.org.