COEUR d’ALENE — These days, Seltice Way is wrapped in orange.

There are orange lane dividers, orange signs, orange cones, barricades and heavy equipment, but it’s not enough to make drivers see red.

As the second phase of the $5.44 million road improvement project kicks in later this week, traffic will flow more smoothly than it has for the first phase, which started last spring.

The eastbound lane of Seltice Way from Huetter Road to Riverstone has been reconstructed and crews from T. LaRiviere Construction have finished adding a layer of asphalt to the roadway.

That means two-way traffic will move from the westbound lane on the north side of the median to the newly-paved eastbound lane on the south side of the median.

In the second phase, contractors will reconstruct and pave the westbound lanes.

“That should start by the end of this week, or early next week,” assistant city administrator Sam Taylor said.

But the stop-and-go traffic, and the bottleneck at intersections such as Atlas Road, where during the first construction phase merging motorists were left looking for a dearth of traffic gaps to merge into, should be alleviated.

Newly completed roundabouts will play a part.

“We’ll be using roundabouts to the extent feasible,” city engineer Chris Bosley said. “That will help move traffic through it.”

A roundabout at Atlas Road will be open for single-lane traffic during construction and part of the Grand Mill Lane roundabout will be open to east and westbound traffic, but the entrance to Mill River will remain temporarily closed.

Entrance into the neighborhood will be via Huetter Road.

Since starting in April, the Seltice Way project has been on schedule and work is set to be completed by the end of the year, or early next year, depending in large part on weather.

So far, the cost of the work has also stayed within projections.

Taylor said road fill dug from the project site and earmarked for the Seltice work was interchanged with construction fill excavated at the Four-Corners project, closer to downtown Coeur d’Alene, after some of the material was found to be subpar. The switch prevented contractors from hauling material from outside the city.

“It caught us off-guard,” Taylor said. “But, we ended up saving about $150,000 by doing that.”

Once it’s completed the project will include landscaping, two roundabouts, bike lanes, shared-use paths and upgraded water and wastewater utilities between Huetter Road and Northwest Boulevard.