Plans for overhauling Douglas County Road 1029 south of Lecompton will be open to public review Thursday.

County officials will conduct a public meeting to answer questions and review project plans at 7:30 p.m. in the Community Building, 333 Elmore in Lecompton.

The $2.3 million job is expected to get started about a year from now, and be finished in June 2004. The project is designed to improve safety for drivers by adding paved shoulders and reducing the steepness of several hills along the 2.75-mile route between the Farmers Turnpike and Lecompton.

The intersection of the road with the Farmers Turnpike also will be rebuilt into a curve, so that traffic traveling between Lawrence and Lecompton won’t have to stop.

The meeting will coincide with the beginning of the county’s formal efforts to acquire property alongside the road to make way for construction. About three dozen tracts are involved.

“You can actually pore through the plans and see what’s happening with your property,” said Keith Browning, the county’s director of Public Works.

The project has been on the county’s drawing board for several years, and officials had intended to have construction completed by the end of this year. But shifts in the project’s size and delays in getting lined up to acquire land pushed matters back at least eight months.

Such delays continue to frustrate Lecompton officials. The road carries about 4,700 vehicles each day, up 27 percent since the Kansas Turnpike’s Lecompton interchange opened in 1996.

“We’ve got another dangerous winter ahead of us,” said Nancy Howard, a member of the Lecompton City Council.