The years-long quest to widen Route 22 received a big boost Thursday morning.

Lehigh Valley officials announced a $6 million investment of federal funds into the project to widen the Lehigh Valley Thruway to six lanes between Fullerton Avenue in Whitehall Township and Airport Road in Hanover Township, Lehigh County.

During a news conference at the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission’s headquarters in Allentown, state Sen. Nick Miller said the funds would be used to acquire land for the highway’s right of way, utility reclamation and finalizing engineering design.

“We’re going to move with a sense of urgency to make that happen all the way down to the airport,” said Miller, D-Lehigh. “If you’ve driven on 22, like maybe most of you have today to get here, you know how congestion turns it into a parking lot. Being the backbone of the Lehigh Valley’s infrastructure, addressing this with a sense of urgency is crucial for our long-term economic stability, and the quality of life that we love here in the Lehigh Valley.”

PennDOT District 5 Executive Chris Kufro said construction on the $28 million project will begin in late 2028 or early 2029, with completion two or three years later. It will be timed to align with the reconstruction of the Fullerton Avenue interchange.

In the meantime, PennDOT will complete preliminary engineering, gather the rest of the project’s funding and begin acquiring land for widening and stormwater basins once environmental clearances are granted.

According to Lehigh Valley Transportation Study and PennDOT data, about 110,000 vehicles travel that 2-mile stretch that includes the Lehigh River bridge. Congestion is common on the four-lane road, which was built in 1954.

Kufro noted that the Lehigh River bridge has already been widened to handle six lanes. That project was completed in 2019.

PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll said traffic counts are increasing at a rate of 2% or 3% annually, which means those counts could hit 120,000 or 130,000 in the not-too-distant future.

“This is a really important project, not just for Lehigh Valley, for the entire state,” Carroll said. “The growth in Lehigh Valley is real.”

LVPC Executive Director Becky Bradley said safety is also a major reason to push the project forward.

“Congestion not only keeps us from where we want to go, but it creates a safety hazard,” she said. “As a result, this is the segment of roadway that we’re accelerating. It is also statistically one of the highest crash areas in the Lehigh Valley, logging more than a dozen serious injuries and fatalities over the past five years.”

If things go as planned, Route 22 will eventually be six lanes from 15th Street in South Whitehall Township to Airport Road, but that will take additional funding and studies before the first shovel hits the dirt.

The LVPC has hired a consulting service to help come up with the U.S. Route 22: Mobility, Safety & Congestion Management Plan — also known as the “What to do with 22 Plan.” It will be a vastly updated version of the 22 Tomorrow plan published in 1999.

It will look at the 23-mile stretch from the split with Interstate 78 in Upper Macungie Township to the New Jersey state line at Easton.

Morning Call reporter Evan Jones can be reached at ejones@mcall.com.