About a year from now, the Minnesota Department of Transportation will begin reconstructing a segment of Hwy. 100 to eliminate one of the worst bottlenecks in the western metro.

It also hopes to make the dangerous stretch of the highway between 25th Street and 36th Street safer.

MnDOT officials will show off a layout of the project and talk about the construction timetable during an open house from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Groves Academy, 3200 Hwy. 100 in St. Louis Park.

Scheduled to begin next fall, the $60 million project includes rebuilding interchanges at Hwy. 7 and Minnetonka Blvd. It also includes reconstructing the highway to have three 12-foot wide lanes in each direction. Additional acceleration lanes, replacement of two railroad bridges and drainage improvements are part of the project. The final design could also include a noise wall.

The segment of highway just south of I-394 has 1 to 2 hours of congestion each weekday between 2 and 7 p.m., according to MnDOT figures. It's also prone to accidents. From 200 to 2009, there were 443 wrecks between Cedar Lake Road and Minnetonka Blvd, MnDOT figures show. None have been fatal.

Construction contracts are set to be awarded in May 2014 and work to begin later in the year. Construction should be done by 2017.

See project location here.