NEW SEWICKLEY, Beaver County — Huge improvements are coming to Freedom Crider Road in Beaver County about two miles west of Cranberry Township.

It is a project that could have a significant economic impact in Cranberry, the destination for some of the 6,000 vehicles that use the road each day.

The improvements will vastly improve the road with its array of curves, hills and deteriorating road surface.

Freedom Crider Road runs between Route 65 at its western end in Beaver County and Route 19 at its eastern end in Cranberry. The road is known as Freedom Road in Cranberry.

Local and state government officials met Tuesday morning at the intersection of Freedom Crider Road and Route 989 to discuss the improvements, which will completely reconstruct more than 3½ miles of road.

It is expected to cost about $81 million.

Those officials cautioned the project won’t break ground until at least 2016 and won’t be completed until 2020. But once it’s finished, motorists using the road will have an easier time driving east to Cranberry, the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Interstate 79.

“Everybody wants to go to Cranberry,” said Beaver County Commissioner Joe Spanik. “Now Cranberry can come to Beaver County.”

The improvements are expected to make it much easier for commercial trucking to get from Beaver County to Cranberry and in turn to the turnpike and other heavily-used roads.

Dan Cessna, a spokesman with the state Department of Transportation, said Tuesday morning repairs on that section of road are past due, adding there are safety and economic incentives for improving it.

“It’s almost like the road disappears,” Cessna said about the portions of Freedom Crider Road.

State Sen. Elder Vogel, R-47th, backed up those claims and called the several miles a “very bad, windy stretch of road.”

Cessna said once the improvements are complete, the new road will be an “arterial, urban road.”

Cranberry manager Jerry Andree said plans for improving the entire Freedom Road corridor have been in the works for more than 30 years, and added this project is just one step toward realizing a bigger dream.

Another part of that project is widening the bridge on Freedom Road that passes over the turnpike in Cranberry, a point that has been a “major bottleneck” for motorists for years.

Andree said PennDOT is still at least two years away from starting work there, although he added he’s optimistic about the road’s future once both projects are finished.

“This is good news,” he said. “Certainly with the proposed (natural gas) cracker plant in Beaver County, these projects continue to solidify the economic links between Cranberry and Beaver County.”