WINSTON-SALEM -- Lifelong Winston-Salem resident Albert Porter has seen the changes along U.S. 52 over the years and experienced the growing traffic problems.

"At 4 o'clock in the evening, it's almost a snail's crawl," Porter said.

But North Carolina DOT officials are hoping to make things better with a $16 million project that would make changes along 12 miles of U.S. 52 through Winston-Salem from Interstate 40 to the Bethania-Rural Hall Road exit.

"We've been working on this since 2000 and primarily because of the accident rate and the tremendous congestion that we see on U.S. 52, particularly during the peak hours everyday," Pat Ivey, with NCDOT, explained.

On Monday night, the DOT hosted an information session and public hearing to present their final designs for the project. Officials say they would like to make the shoulders into travel lanes from I-40 to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to create an additional lane in each direction.

The project also calls for closing some ramps along 52 at Stadium Drive, Third Street and Fifth Street, which is something that concerns Porter.

"A lot of people would like some of these ramps to stay because if you're traveling north or south on 52 it would be easy access downtown or where ever you have to go the way it is now, but we need to do something about the congestion," he said.

Officials say by closing those ramps it would ease that congestion and make merging much safer.

If everything goes as planned construction could begin by 2010 and will take about 18 months.