AMERICAN FORK — Highland officials may have underestimated residents' interest in a conceptual corridor that could one day come to the community.

But the message came through loud and clear at a special meeting Wednesday night where hundreds of residents came and voiced a majority anthem — don't even think about widening 9600 North.

Residents are worried about the impacts that an amended general plan — with a wider 9600 north — could have on the community. City leaders have been discussing the road's potential to be 74 feet wide instead of 66 feet wide as a part of re-examining their general plan, which hasn't been updated for 10 years.

Highland City Administrator Barry Edwards says the city hopes to approve any amendments to the master plan by the beginning of next year.

"The city has no plans to widen the road," Edwards said. "(If the road is amended in the city's master plan) it becomes a planning thought on the map. If somebody else comes up with the funding and uses it (to build the road), then they'd be able to, but the bottom line is, it's a concept."

The idea of widening 9600 North originated with the Mountainland Association of Governments, the area's regional transportation planning organization, as part of a larger objective to create a new east-west corridor from Lehi to Pleasant Grove.

If 9600 North was widened to become part of a corridor system, it would be Highland's responsibility to complete the town's portion of the project, MAG Transportation Planner Shawn Seager said. The road isn't big enough to be considered a state concern, so Utah's Department of Transportation wouldn't be involved, Seager said.

In the end, the east-west corridor doesn't necessarily have to run along 9600 North, Seager said, but then some other road in that area would be needed to be "part of the overall transportation solution for that northeast part of Utah County," Seager said.

There isn't any information about where a potential corridor would connect along already-existing roads because the idea is in such preliminary stages. Nevertheless, Seager says something needs to be done in the area by 2015 or north Utah County's already burgeoning traffic problems will become worse.

"If a corridor isn't built by 2015, we will have levels of service on the road system below a level 'D,'" Seager said. "That is a level where you might have traffic congestion in the a.m. and p.m. peak hours and at peak travel times."

The majority of residents who crowded into the Legacy Elementary School in American Fork on Wednesday night said they don't want their city to become a thoroughfare for residents of nearby cities.

"This is emotional for me," Highland resident Stephanie Anderson told the audience of some 500 people. "If (residents of neighboring cities) want to disrupt their lives by driving out of their way because they don't have connectors to our connectors, that's OK for them."