The city of Huber Heights is planning to widen Old Troy Pike north of Interstate 70 — the eighth and final phase of a project that has taken about 20 years to complete.

Construction is expected to start in April and be completed by the fall.

The project is estimated to cost between $1.2 and $1.3 million, with $1 million of it being paid for by a Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission grant. The balance will be paid with county permissive tax funds, City Engineer Russ Bergman said.

The city plans to bid the project during the next couple of months.

Construction will begin 600 feet north of Shull Road and continue north up to Gibson Drive, a stretch of 3,100 linear feet of roadway.

“This is the last one on the north end of town from corporation limit to corporation limit,” Bergman said. “It will be a five-lane road all the way through town.”

It is four miles from one end of the city to the other, and similar work that had been completed during the previous seven phases will be done during the eighth phase.

The project includes widening and realignment of the roadway to five lanes, installing sidewalks, handicap ramps, street lighting, and curb and storm sewer.

“If you drive on the north side of 70 on this road, it will make traffic more efficient,” Bergman said.

Bergman said it’s taken 20 to 25 years to complete all eight phases, and most — if not all — of the sections were funded by state or federal grants. He was unsure of the total cost of the entire project.

That stretch of Old Troy Pike — which is a mix of commercial and residential — averages nearly 20,000 vehicles per day, Bergman said.

The city said this phase of the Old Troy Pike project is key to providing adequate transportation to and from the area north of Huber Heights and the Carriage Trails housing development.

“It’s great to finally get to it,” Mayor Ron Fisher said. “All that stuff is so expensive that you can’t do it all at once. Traffic congestion will continue to get deeper up there, especially with Trimble expanding, and that means more jobs and more traffic. This will relieve that up there. There won’t be a funnel up there to slow everything down.”

Bergman said there will be no interruptions to the traffic flow during construction.