Highway To Nowhere

If you’re from the Crafton area, you’re probably aware of Industrial Highway, a.k.a. «The Highway to Nowhere». I was reminded of this highway yesterday when I stopped for lunch at nearby Sharp Edge Creekhouse. Industrial Highway is another one of those quirky little incomplete projects that have always fascinated me.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the road, it’s an approximately .6-​mile long stretch of highway that’s built to expressway standards. It’s actually in the Fairywood section of the city and it runs from Roswell Drive to Beechnut Drive. It looks like it may have been intended to start Someplace and go Somewhere by way of Something. But it doesn’t and therein lies the mystery. Where was this highway intended to go?
According to the website above, «The roadway was to run from PA 60 just east of the Thornburg Bridge northwards along Chartiers Creek to PA 51 in the Esplen Neighborhood that borders the town of McKees Rocks.» If that was true, what would be the point of building an expressway connecting Crafton with McKees Rocks? Was it to serve the light industrial park? Was it intended to be a bypass around Broadhead Manor, now abandoned but once one of the most dangerous public housing projects?
Whatever the case may be, the highway is not abandoned. You can drive on it, although why would you? The highway seems to have no reason to exist and could be closed because the area streets also serve the industrial park. Pennsylvania has a whole bunch of stalled, abandoned, and never started public works projects and this is one of the more obscure ones.