People unfamiliar with Blair County’s mid-20th century highways probably cannot grasp the picture fully of how major roadway projects over the subsequent decades were the springboard for great economic progress.

Interstate 99 has been the biggest economic generator up to now for the county as a whole and it isn’t done yet, as this editorial will discuss.

However, numerous other improvements, including bigger ones such as the modern, four-lane, limited-access Route 22, Altoona’s 10th Avenue Expressway and 17th Street corridor, plus the improvements to Plank Road, Logan Boulevard and Pleasant Valley and Valley View boulevards, extracted the Mountain City from its “confinement” as a one-major-industry town with limited modern travel amenities.

Altoona has grown into a vibrant, diverse, welcoming entity where “the sky’s the limit” remains a very apt descriptive phrase.

Perhaps one way of grasping understanding regarding the magnitude of what was achieved via I-99’s construction is to reflect on how the current traffic volume on the highway in Blair County would have been accommodated by the highways of yesteryear.

It’s safe to say, “Not very well.”

Another means for gaining the I-99-related understanding is to ponder how much of the development now in place would be here if the modern highways had not been built.

Back in the 1990s, Cranberry Township in Butler County was experiencing the kind of traffic congestion that the Altoona area now would be experiencing without I-99.

Cranberry’s remedy was a connector project linking Interstate 79 with the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Meanwhile, I-99 is destined to benefit greatly from the project currently underway to link “99” to Interstate 80 in Centre County.

Blair County will benefit from the additional traffic that chooses to use I-99 for its destinations because of the absence of slowdowns resulting from the current lack of a high-speed connection involving the two interstates. And highway efficiency attracts new enterprises that demand efficiency in regard to whatever it is that they do.

Benefits of those new enterprises will spill down to Blair County, despite the distance between this county and the new interchange.

Meanwhile, the new interchange, despite attracting additional traffic to I-99, will continue to be a congestion buster for those communities that for too long were bottlenecks to efficient travel — to the traveling public as well as to freight haulers.

An article in the Mirror’s March 17 edition reinforced that observation.

“Completing all three phases (of the interchange-related project) will support the regional freight economy and improve the reliability of roadway travel throughout the region,” the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation said in a news release.

The project also will realign service for local traffic, with all phases of the project expected to be completed by the end of the next five construction seasons — ending in 2030.

As reported in the March 17 Mirror article, a big part of the project this year will involve hauling fill material from a quarry to the project site — and that work is expected to continue for the remainder of the 2026 construction season.

A suggestion seems apropos at this time:

Pennsylvania finally needs to begin looking seriously at extending I-99 south to the Maryland border. The volume of truck traffic using that section of highway, along with motorists whose travel is delayed by the volume of oftentimes slow-moving freight traffic, are clear notifications that “living in the past” on that section of highway should not be tolerated much longer without serious work beginning.