In July of last year, a Casper woman drove her car onto the right shoulder of Highway 220, overcorrected into the oncoming traffic and died when she struck a pickup truck driven by a 20-year-old man.

It was a familiar scene for the stretch of Highway 220 that runs between Casper and Lake Alcova. The Narrows Section between mileposts 103 and 97, beginning roughly 10 miles south of Casper, has a higher crash rate than the state average, Wyoming Department of Transportation engineers said.

Between 1992 and 2002 there were four fatal crashes on that stretch of highway. The preceding five miles of highway, called the Casper South Section, was nearly as bad with three fatal crashes in the same period.

WYDOT officials and engineering consultants Parsons Brinckerhoff of Salt Lake City have been working to address the dangers of those two highway sections. WYDOT District Engineer Jack Bell said public pressure, recent fatal accidents and the rising traffic volume have pushed the project forward.

On Thursday night the public saw the plans to construct a four-lane divided road with a median for an 11.5-mile stretch of the highway south of Casper.

Jim Peterson, 55, a ranch hand at Miles Land and Livestock who was at the open house presentation, said he has seen a few head-on accidents and lots of people sliding into the ditches on that stretch of road.

"When people are coming, they get in a big hurry," he said. "They do a lot of passing when they shouldn't be."

Jill Rhea, 62, agreed the area is dangerous, especially with truck traffic steadily increasing.

"I would say it's probably necessary," said Rhea who lives near the proposed construction area. "I can't say that I like the idea because we're close to the highway and whatever they do will probably bring the highway closer to our house."

The highway, however, won't be going anywhere anytime soon. Officials will now prepare environmental assessments for the two plans and then the public will have a chance to comment again. It will be March 2004 before the design and construction phase of the project begins, if WYDOT does indeed choose to build.

WYDOT engineer Clifford Spoonemore said workers would construct the highway in two, roughly equal sections, each taking two years. The scheduled completion date is 2009.

Spoonemore estimates a cost of about $2.5 million per mile of highway. He cautions that special considerations for wetlands and engineering for geologic slide, where the movement of Casper Mountain would cause the road to buckle, will drive the price up.