LAKE STEVENS — No one is looking forward to the road construction scheduled to begin on Highway 92 late this spring, but residents say improving the highway is long overdue.

"It’s not going to be fun, but it’s hard to complain about it," said Michelle Conner after a recent Department of Transportation information meeting attended by about 40 people. "It’s going to benefit all of us when it’s done."

The state plans to widen intersections and add turn lanes along nearly six miles of Highway 92 from Highway 9 to 84th Street NE just outside Granite Falls. The road will also be lowered by about 6 feet at 113th Avenue NE, which many Lake Stevens High School students use, and flattened it to make it easier to see oncoming traffic.

"It’s going to (prevent) accidents for the high school kids and make it easier to get on and off the highway," Connor said.

For the three weeks it will take to lower the road, Highway 92 will be closed except to local traffic. Traffic will be detoured to 84th Street NE (Getchell Road), said Vanessa McCormick, the project designer. The contract requires that work near the school be finished before school starts in the fall.

Because the highway is a key corridor to Everett, much of the work will be done at night to reduce the effect on commuters.

Conner and others who live north of Highway 92 in the Callow Road area worry that residents will ignore the detour route and drive through their neighborhood on a road that wasn’t made for heavy traffic. Many of the homes on Callow Road are old mill houses set close to the street.

Signage may help, though.

"I think they’ve satisfied our concerns by putting in ‘local access only’ signs," said Roland Van Haeften, a Callow Road resident.

"This whole project is going to be a huge inconvenience, but it was absolutely needed 10 years ago," Lake Stevens Mayor Lynn Walty said. "It’s the beginning of what’s needed out here."

The project will cost $3 million and is due for completion by the end of summer 2005.

The state plans to add turn lanes at 99th Avenue NE and 147th Avenue NE. There will be a right turn only onto Highway 92 at 127th Avenue NE, a change made because crossing the highway has become too dangerous.

The project also includes some guardrail and lighting installation, striping and tree removal.

"There’s lots of other intersections that need widening," Walty said. "We need four lanes here, but that’s not in the state’s 20-year plan."

Maryellen Huson lives at Cedar Springs north of Highway 92, and says the intersection near her home needs work, too.

"We take our life in our hands when we go to make a left turn (to get off the highway)," she said. "All it takes is one hotdog trying to pass, and they do it all the time."

Snohomish County sheriff’s deputies and state troopers often have extra traffic patrols in the area, but that only slows traffic for a couple of weeks, she said.

"Then we start hearing crash, crash, crash!" she said.

Others agreed that more needs to be done, but state officials at the meeting said there’s no more money for Highway 92 right now.

Reporter Cathy Logg: 425-339-3437 or logg@heraldnet.com.