Beware Whidbey Island drivers. It’s going to be a busy year for roadwork and next year won’t be any better.

A $4.7-million state project to make safety improvements on State Highway 20 at the Island County transfer station near Coupeville started this week. Workers are focusing on Parker Road for now, but work on the highway may start as soon as next week, according to Dave Crisman, the project engineer for the state Department of Transportation.

The highway will be down to one lane in the area as the contractor starts saw-cutting to widen the highway. Drivers should expect delays up to 15 minutes, a Department of Transportation spokesman said.

“The first week will be the worst until people adjust their schedules or find different routes,” Crisman said.

The contractor will only be able to close a lane on Monday through Thursday, from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. The work is scheduled to be finished in the first week of August.

The project will add a left-turn lane at the transfer station, widen the shoulders on the highway, realign Parker Road to connect with Morris Road, close the intersection of Smith Prairie Road and the highway, and add turn lanes on the highway at Morris Road.

Elsewhere, Dike Road on North Whidbey is closed for wetland mitigation work. The Department of Transportation is building a new dike and road during the three-month project, which should be completed by August.

Bill Oakes, director of Island County Public Works, said the county also has a lot of work scheduled for county roads, but none of it will be as disruptive as the state projects. Much of the county work is part of the “pavement preservation program,” which consists of seal coats, maintenance pavement and construction pavement.

Oakes pointed out that the state has ambitious plans for paving projects on Highway 20 and Highway 525 next year, which is sure to gum up traffic. He compares the maintenance work to tearing off a Band-Aid.

“If they do all this work, they won’t be back for awhile,” he said, “but it still hurts.”