Busy Frankstown Road intersection in Penn Hills to get facelift using more than $300K grant

A busy intersection along Frankstown Road in Penn Hills will get a facelift soon thanks to a recently issued state grant.

Penn Hills received a $328,803 grant from PennDOT’s Automated Red Light Enforcement (ARLE) program to modernize traffic and pedestrian lights at the intersection of Frankstown Road, Spring Grove Road and Shenandoah Drive, Gov. Tom Wolf’s office announced Dec. 7.

The municipality will match the funding with Community Development Block Grant funds to build handicapped-accessible ramps for additional future sidewalk development.

Meg Balsamico, principal planner of the municipality’s planning department, said the lights will be replaced with LED bulbs. The poles and arms holding the lights also will be replaced. She was unsure when the project would be completed, but said projects like this typically take two to three years.

“The engineering and design phase will take some time, and then we’ll bid it out once everything is prepared,” Balsamico said.

The busy intersection’s traffic lights have been on Penn Hills’ list of priorities for a while.

“They’re pretty old,” she said.

Lights at other intersections throughout the municipality also have aged. Some of them have received new LED bulbs, but total rehabilitations like the one this state grant will fund are still on planners’ checklists.

When submitting the grant application, the planning department had asked for funding to replace the traffic lights at the intersection of Poketa and Verona roads.

“Frankstown is much more heavily traveled than Verona (Road). It definitely will be an improvement. And it’ll increase the mobility of the traffic and be safer for pedestrians,” Balsamico said.

Penn Hills Manager Scott Andrejchak praised the planning department’s ability to secure state funding.

“They’re on a regular basis submitting applications for grant funding,” he said. “You don’t really realize how expensive these types of projects are. So we’re obviously happy to get these state dollars. Without it, we’d have a hard time to do that improvement.”

The project was among 16 in Pennsylvania collectively awarded $8.2 million this week from the ARLE program. The grants, which do not require local matching money, are meant to improve safety and enhance mobility. They are funded through fines from red light violations at 31 intersections in Philadelphia.

“This program helps communities across the state make important investments in traffic flow and safety,” Wolf said in a news release.