Officials gathered Wednesday in Selma's Pioneer Village for an event that was supposed to have taken place more than two years ago -- groundbreaking for the Freeway 99 widening south to Kingsburg.

Repeated cuts in state highway construction funding led to the project's postponement from a summer 2003 start, which would have meant completion by next summer.

Now, Caltrans officials say work on the highway's bridges is likely to begin in a few weeks and completion is scheduled for early 2008.

That won't be too soon for the pair of southern Fresno County cities whose existing four-lane freeway will be widened to six lanes for a stretch of almost seven miles.

"By spring 2008, with our fingers crossed, we look forward to smooth sailing between Selma and Kingsburg," said Cindy Howell, executive director of the Selma District Chamber of Commerce.

The $62 million project is the first of three consecutive widenings that are intended to produce a six-lane freeway as far south as Tulare by the middle of the next decade.

Next on the list is the stretch from Kingsburg to Goshen in Tulare County, a 13-mile segment that is projected to start construction in spring 2010, followed by the 11-mile portion from Goshen to Prosperity Avenue in Tulare, scheduled to begin two years later.

Elsewhere, a fourth project north of Madera awaits final review by the California Transportation Commission and is scheduled to begin by summer at the latest. It will replace three miles of four-lane expressway with six lanes of new freeway, including a new interchange at Avenue 22. Completion is scheduled for late 2008.

All of the projects fit into a long-term Caltrans plan to turn 99 into a six-lane freeway from one end of the San Joaquin Valley to the other.

But several dignitaries attending Wednesday's ceremony said they don't want to stop with that: They want Interstate highway status for Freeway 99.

As they competed with traffic noise just a few yards from where they stood, they said the highway's high truck volumes justify an upgrade.

"It deserves to be an Interstate," said Assembly Member Juan Arambula, D-Fresno.

"It wasn't that long ago that the last stoplight was removed on 99,"Arambula said. "Now we need to make sure that we remove other bottlenecks and that we remove all of them."

The reporter can be reached at rclemings@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6371.