DENVER -- Families living near Interstate 25 are concerned for the safety of their children because they say that the T-REX project threatens to increase traffic in nearby neighborhood streets.

T-REX PROJECT VIDEO: TREX Begins With Ramp Closures VIDEO: T-REX To Widen The Narrows First VIDEO: One Family Is Not Happy With T-REX SURVEY: Will You Change Your Driving Route Because Of T-REX? RESOURCES DenverChannel T-REX Section Don't Let T-REX Get Under Your Collar Avoid Accidents During T-REX T-REX Web Site Current Traffic and Road Conditions

The first work on the I-25 expansion will begin at Yale and Hampden this fall. Construction in the "narrows" -- between Broadway and Steele -- will also begin this fall.

Demolition of bridges won't start until the spring, and the first ones will be Louisiana Avenue, Logan Street and Franklin Street.

Families living near the highway are concerned about traffic spilling off of the interstate onto their neighborhood streets.

Rain or shine, Veronica Hansen's daughter, Elisa, loves to play in the yard. But that will change once the I-25 T-REX project begins and drivers start looking for shortcuts around the construction.

"I'm not looking forward to it at all," Hansen said. "Accidents seem to happen a lot more when there are more cars going faster."

Hansen anticipates that the number of cars zipping by her porch will triple. Her solution was to build a fence.

"What else can I do, you know? What else is there that we're going to be able to do as parents to keep (children) out of traffic, besides watching them, of course?" Hansen said.

T-REX contractor representative Karen Morales says that T-REX's first step -- widening the highway for temporary lanes during construction -- should help diminish motorists' desire to jump off of the interstate.

"It's inevitable that a certain amount of cut-through traffic is going to occur," Morales said. "We will be working closely with the traffic planners in each of the adjacent communities in developing plans to discourage that."

But residents whose view could include that traffic don't buy it.

"They say, 'No, we'll keep it moving on the highway,' but I say it's not moving now, and they're going to improve it during construction? I don't think so," parent Carma Harper said.

Each neighborhood association will have liaisons from the T-REX project, 7NEWS reported. Those liasons will take information about any problems to a weekly task force meeting designed to generate solutions.