Southwestern Butler County is working together again and that should be applauded.

In the latest news out of four municipalities in the southwestern part of Butler County — Cranberry and Jackson townships, Zelienople and Harmony — a collaboration will take a data-driven approach to addressing problematic roads in the region via the Southwest Butler County Multi-Municipal Safety Action Plan.

The municipalities have a shared vision for their communities, so when they work together, their efforts benefit the entire region — and have inspired collaboration elsewhere, too.

The group has previously talked about stormwater following catastrophic flooding in the region in efforts to mitigate future episodes and spoken about the EMS crisis.

Because of this, Cranberry Township Manager Dan Santoro said the most recent joint venture came about naturally.

“This was just another in a series of us working cooperatively as municipalities to identify challenges and working cooperatively to find solutions,” he said in a Tuesday, March 31, article in the Butler Eagle.

Collectively, the municipalities had received U.S. Department of Transportation Safe Streets and Roads for All program funding for the creation and implementation of a safety action plan to find and plug gaps in road safety.

Together, the municipalities used data to determine the most likely spots for crashes and pedestrian-involved accidents in the five-year period they looked at between 2019 and 2023.

“We’ve formed a data-driven perspective and identified safety related improvements, where the most critical areas are to areas there are safety concerns,” Santoro explained.

The plan sets priorities in an intentional way, which is important when dollar amounts for just the five major priority projects are estimated to cost a total of $49.3 million.

That’s a sizable chunk of money that will address intersections like the one at Zehner School Road and Gudekunst Road, which the study found was one of the most frequent intersections for crashes in the region.

It’s a worthy endeavor, however it came to be. But as we see it, long-term plans are best made collaboratively and informed with data. Kudos to these municipalities for working together for their residents.

— TL