The road work on Central Expressway starts in Plano and does not seem to end until suburbia gives way to prairie beyond McKinney.

Several projects totaling more than a quarter of a billion dollars are gathering steam along the highway in Collin County, a testament to the area's growth. And more work is planned.

In fact, the current and future projects combined will roughly cost twice as much as Dallas' massive $261 million High Five interchange project.

A motorist's mess? Absolutely. Central backs up routinely, and some projects could linger well into the next decade. Call it the price of progress.

"What it all comes down to is growth," said Tim Brown, owner of Hot Shots Delivery and Moving in Plano, whose trucks regularly navigate the construction.

Workers are rebuilding three interchanges on Central Expressway: at Parker Road in Plano, at State Highway 121 and at U.S. Highway 380 in northern McKinney.

Additional interchange and widening projects are planned from McKinney north to the Grayson County line.

As it stands, the expressway is midway through its face-lift.

Motorists pass by battalions of cement trucks and through lanes that shift and shut down depending on the day.

The biggest effort is a $220 million interchange at Central and 121. The endeavor is about a third finished.

Piles of tangled steel extracted from the old roadway resemble giant bowls of spaghetti. T-shaped supports jut into the sky, soon to hold up bridge decks that will carry thousands of vehicles daily from Collin County to points west.

"Clearly, it's overdue," said Frank Ragan, city manager for McKinney. "We're looking at regional relief."

What once was a horizon of unspoiled prairie along the expressway has become a terrain of corporate campuses and commerce. The construction zone in McKinney, in fact, is book-ended by two new Super Target stores.

In the interim, motorists are bracing for delays. Some are counting the days until work finishes.

McKinney florist Peggy Franklin welcomes the improvements. But she laments the construction traffic that builds daily at the U.S. 380 interchange.

"We do everything we can to avoid that intersection," said Franklin, owner of Franklin's Flowers. "We make it a point to have all our deliveries made by 3:30 p.m."

McKinney, which has grown more in the last eight years than in the previous 150, is the biggest beneficiary of the road work.

When finished, Central will have eight lanes as opposed to four as it bisects the city of 100,000.

"It's a war zone right now," Ragan said. "But we're recognizing that things have to get worse before they get better."

Communities to the north are betting the reconstructed highway will spur more growth and extend suburbia to Collin County's farthest reaches.

"It's a necessary inconvenience," said Steve Rodriguez, board chairman for the Melissa Chamber of Commerce.

"We have a saying in Melissa that it's easy to find and hard to leave," he said. "We hope this will make Melissa even easier to find and harder to leave."