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READING — Over four decades ago, Alan Piper began his career interning at the Berks County Planning Commission.
He was on the civil engineering track at Penn State University, but higher-order math was giving him trouble. The internship presented Piper with a different path: transportation planning.
“You can do all this stuff that I like about civil engineering — stuff for roads and stuff like that, but I don’t have to do the math,” he said.
Now, nearly 44 years later, Piper is the lead transportation planner for the Reading Area Transportation Study, the group responsible for coordinating road and bridge repair and construction plans for Berks County.
The Reading Area Transportation Study (RATS) was created in 1964 under the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which required urban areas with 50,000 or more people to create a metropolitan planning organization (MPO). The MPOs aimed to ensure order in the transportation decision-making process.
The RATS group was initially made up of state, county, and city of Reading representatives, but when federal guidelines changed in the 1990s to address air pollution, Berks County’s suburban and rural communities also joined. RATS coordinates with officials on all levels, including local transportation authorities like the Reading Regional Airport Authority, to develop long-range and short-range transportation plans for the county. Following the adopted plans is important to secure most federal funding for road and bridge construction and repair projects, Piper said.
RATS’ responsibilities have expanded as the county has grown. It now develops and maintains a congestion management process and performs a quadrennial review and certification of the planning process with federal agencies.
“So our role is to try and bring those projects that we feel are important into the system, into that process, and then work with PennDOT to implement them and have them carried out,” Piper said, referencing the state transportation department.
With his decades of experience planning and navigating transportation for Berks County, Piper shares with Spotlight PA Berks what has changed in the field and what projects are in the works with RATS.
Q: How has transportation planning changed over the years?
Piper said two things come to mind: more red tape, but also more collaboration.
Before the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, which increased collaboration between state transportation departments and local planning organizations, “almost all of the decisions” for road projects were made by PennDOT, he said.
“You went to them, you said, ‘Here’s our wish list,’ and they looked at it and said, ‘OK, well, here’s what you get,’” Piper said. “You can wish, but they told. Now it’s become a more collaborative process.”
The federal changes established a formal, federally required process to make sure local transportation plans conform to air quality standards.
Q: What’s important to understand about transportation planning?
In the early days, Piper said people wanted to convert every highway into faster, divided, limited-access expressways and build roads around (rather than through) Reading, which is neither practical nor financially feasible.
Planners are required to identify available or anticipated funding for a project before it can be placed in any short or long-term plans.
Q: Is RATS involved in the Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority?
The Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority is a group trying to reestablish passenger rail service between Reading and Philadelphia. For now, RATS’ role is limited to incorporating transit into planning and sharing pertinent information.
“Until that project reaches a certain point, we have no role,” Piper said, adding the group will likely get more involved once plans take shape.
Plans for a passenger rail line have been in the works for several years now. At the beginning of 2025, the Berks County commissioners approved a 47-year extension to continue the Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority.
Q: What’s a project to look out for in Berks County?
While RATS is focused on updating its short- and long-range transportation plans, there are some projects on the horizon that will have a huge impact in Berks County.
The state plans to begin soliciting bids in late 2026 or early 2027 to reconstruct and widen five miles of Route 222, but there’s another large project waiting in the wings, Piper said.
In the next few years, Berks County will reconstruct a portion of Route 422 in Reading, commonly referred to as the West Shore bypass, he said.
The first phase of the project is estimated to cost over $300 million. The highway will be rebuilt with three lanes in each direction from the Buttonwood Street overpass to the Interstate 176 interchange. The plan will redesign interchanges at both Penn Street and Lancaster Avenue and modify the I-176 interchange.
“Jumping over to the bridge just west of 176,” Piper said, referring to the on-ramp to Route 422 from I-176. “If you’re coming from Morgantown, and you come around that ramp … you sit there and hold your breath and either jam on the brakes or step on the gas.”
Track road and bridge construction projects near you through PennDOT’s website.
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