It's been a long time coming, but this finally may be the year ground is broken on the half-billion-dollar project to widen Highway 76.

With a required environmental study having been completed in late November, the California Department of Transportation is gearing up for construction of the six-mile middle section of Highway 76 between Melrose Drive in Oceanside and Mission Road in Bonsall.

"We've begun appraising and purchasing properties out there, and our target for starting construction is late this year," said Mark Phelan, Caltrans' Highway 76 project manager, in an interview this week.

Phelan said the planned transformation of the $244 million middle section from a winding, two-lane road to a broad and straighter four-lane highway should be completed by the middle of 2012.

At the same time, Caltrans is moving forward with plans to widen the 5.5-mile section between Mission Road and Interstate 15, which is expected to cost between $225 million and $250 million.

Phelan said the highway-building agency expects to issue a draft environmental impact report for that eastern section by late this year and a final report by late 2010, clearing the way for construction to begin there in early 2011.

The entire stretch from Oceanside to I-15 is expected to open to four lanes of traffic by late 2014, he said.

Area residents are generally pleased to see that construction may be about to begin, but are weary of waiting.

"We're most anxious to get on with this," said Margie Hopkins of Fallbrook, who maintains the Web site fixthe76now.com that has been spurring Caltrans and a regional transportation planning agency, the San Diego Association of Governments, to build the road faster.

Hopkins said her No. 1 concern is safety.

"Some residents don't want it widened because they say it will impact their quality of life," Hopkins said. "They need to open their eyes. Quality of life includes not being slaughtered on the highway."

Five times as many people lost their lives on the section of road between Melrose and I-15 during the past half decade than did during the five years before that.

According to figures provided by California Highway Patrol spokeswoman Jaime Coffee in Sacramento, five people died in Highway 76 crashes that occurred from 1998 through 2002, then fatalities multiplied to 24 for 2003 through 2007, the last year for which reliable statistics were available.

The worst year was 2006, when seven were killed on the road. Five people lost their lives in each of three years: 2007, 2004 and 2003.

Hopkins said she believes the road is deadly because it leaves little room for error.

"If someone swerves in front of you or does something wrong, there is nothing you can do," she said.

The road is narrow and curvy, without shoulders and with limited visibility on curves. And only a stripe of paint separates the two-way traffic.

The widening, besides adding a lane in each direction, will add shoulders and a center concrete barrier to prevent head-on collisions, according to Caltrans' new report.

Safety aside, the new lanes are critically needed to accommodate traffic that has swollen dramatically in recent years from local development, the opening of busy nearby casinos and the emergence of Highway 76 as a commuter route between Southwest Riverside County and the North County coast.

"It's a Catch-22," said Gerald Walson, a Bonsall community leader. "I would prefer that they don't widen it because that would have a smaller impact on our community. But the traffic demands that they widen it."

Walson just wishes the project had been completed by now.

"Schedules slip, and the cost always creeps up," he said.

Indeed, at one time construction of the middle section was supposed to begin by December 2007 and the entire 11-mile stretch between Oceanside and I-15 was to be completed by 2012. Now completion is slated for two years later.

Late or not, Duncan McFetridge, chairman of the Descanso-based environmental group Save Our Forest and Ranchlands, wishes the road wouldn't be improved at all. He said he believes the work may indeed provide temporary relief to congestion-weary commuters, but in the long run it will encourage more far-flung development and eventually the road will be just as jammed as it is now.

"In the age of global warming, skyrocketing energy prices, unaffordable housing and dwindling resources, it is crazy to be expanding road infrastructure," McFetridge said. "We should be investing in transit, getting people out of their cars and closer to their jobs."

McFetridge's group sued the San Diego Association of Governments a few years ago, saying its 2030 regional transportation plan included too many of what it considered to be urban-sprawl-inducing roads, and said Highway 76 was one of those. The group eventually settled with the association, which is focusing on developing better transit service in San Diego's central core.

For now at least, McFetridge said, he does not expect to challenge Highway 76 again.

Highway 76 has faced numerous other challenges spanning decades.

Initially it was included in the association's inaugural 20-year TransNet program, and was supposed to be completed from Interstate 5 to I-15 by 2008. But that program ran out of money to complete all projects promised to county voters in fall 1987, when they approved a half-percent sales tax for roads and rail lines. And regional politicians pushed other projects to the front of the line.

Now Highway 76 enjoys first-in-line priority in TransNet's second go-round, but environmental studies have taken longer than expected, Caltrans officials say. That is in part because of the meandering road's location next to the sensitive San Luis Rey River, with its rich habitat for such endangered species as the least Bell's vireo and California gnatcatcher birds, and the arroyo toad.

Partly out of environmental concerns, Caltrans chose to build the middle segment of the project along the existing road on the river's north side.

As it begins analyzing impacts for the eastern section, Caltrans is again considering whether to follow the existing route or jump the river to the south.

Walson, for one, hopes the agency considers to stick with the original path.

"If they choose the southern route, they are going to have to build a several-mile-long bridge to get out of the flood plain because they will have to elevate it," Walson said. "I can't conceive of how they can justify going south."

Meanwhile, the middle-section work will require bulldozing one home near Oceanside and four businesses -- a lock shop, restaurant, tattoo parlor and market, Phelan said. He said the family and each of the businesses will be relocated.

Those properties are among 40 spanning 131 acres that will have to be purchased for the Melrose-to-Mission project, he said.

Contact staff writer Dave Downey at (760) 745-6611, Ext. 2623, or ddowney@nctimes.com.