CARRBORO -- Adrian Hands worries about his daughter when she bikes or walks to Carrboro High School. There are no sidewalks, he said, and it's dangerous for bicyclists to turn off the road.

On Monday, the Town of Carrboro and the N.C. Department of Transportation held a meeting to hear from residents like Hands and get comments on plans to widen Smith Level Road from Morgan Creek to just south of Rock Haven Road and install a roundabout at the intersection with Rock Haven Road.

Smith Level is the main connector between Carrboro and U.S. 15-501, leading to Chatham County. The DOT expects the improvements will help relieve traffic congestion, while allowing pedestrians and bicyclists to travel more safely.

"We project that there's going to be worsening traffic on that road," said Steve Brown, project planning engineer, since both Orange and Chatham counties are growing and Carrboro High School has arrived. He said the traffic is projected to increase from 18,800 vehicles per day in 2005 to 24,100 vehicles per day in 2030.

There are three options for proposed improvements to Smith Level Road.

One option is to make Smith Level Road a four-lane road divided by a median. The second is to make the road three lanes with a roundabout.

The most recently proposed option, the one the DOT is pursuing, is to make Smith Level gradually increase from a three-lane road to four lanes.

The DOT plans to begin the $5 million project in 2011. But until the department has a design, it doesn't know when it will be completed.

A public hearing on the $5 million project will be held sometime in the first quarter of 2009.

The proposal the DOT is leaning to would widen Smith Level to four lanes from the bridge over Morgan Creek to BPW Club Road, transition from four to three lanes from BPW Club Road to Culbreth Road and stay three lanes from Culbreth Road to just below Rock Haven Road.

Hands, who moved with his family to Carrboro two months ago, favors widening Smith Level Road. He also thinks the roundabout will decrease traffic, because it will discourage drivers from using Smith Level as a cut-through from U.S. 15-501 to Carrboro.

John O'Leary, of the town Transportation Advisory Board, said some residents at the workshop preferred a traffic light to a roundabout but that having three traffic lights on Smith Level would create a start-stop situation and create more congestion.

"I think a [roundabout] is a serious consideration," O'Leary said. "It will slow traffic down and let it flow."

Barb Chapman is one of the people nervous about the roundabout.

She lives on Damascus Church Road, and she feels scared when she has to make a left-hand turn onto Smith Level.

She supports widening it, and she's happy sidewalks will be added. But she thinks people will not know how to use the roundabout safely or correctly.

Still, Chapman said she knows the widening and growth is inevitable.

"We all know that the price you pay for living in a beautiful area is that the improvements may have to take place in your back yard," she said.