By Tim Cocks

BAGHDAD, July 6 (Reuters) - If Baghdad Mayor Sabir al-Isawi gets his way, visitors driving out of the city's international airport will notice more than just concrete blast walls, razor wire and checkpoints.

He wants to resurface the multi-lane highway, install street lights and plant trees to spruce up a road that used to be one of Iraq's most dangerous. With violence at 4-year lows, Isawi believes now is the time to start.

"God willing, we're going to make a big difference in a short time," he told reporters at a ceremony on Saturday to launch a $40 million project to rebuild the airport road.

"The important thing is to bring back green areas. We want to light the street," he said. "People coming in will get a sense of a city improving."

He said there were plans to build hotels on either side of the 20 km-long (13-mile) road and pump water from the nearby Tigris River to irrigate patches of grass and flowers.

Until recently, such talk would have been laughable.

For years the highway in Baghdad's southern Rasheed district was a battleground.

Roadside bombs targeting military convoys or heavily armed private security contractors ferrying visitors to the airport frequently exploded. Gunmen with rocket propelled grenades and automatic weapons took pot shots at passing cars.

Residents said they often had to dodge craters left in the road from explosions. After some bombs went off, U.S. or Iraqi troops sprayed houses lining the road with gunfire, they said.

"We were living in hell," said Saad al-Kubaisi, 38, a civil servant whose house is on the road. "We had five or six bombs a day, bullets flying. It's much better now -- I can barely remember the last time I heard an explosion on this street."

Colonel Ted Martin, the brigade commander for U.S. forces in Rasheed district, said many displaced Iraqis had already returned to the area, a sign security had improved.

"Normalcy's returning to this area ... We've seen a constant flow of families coming back," he said at the ceremony.

The U.S. military wants to capitalise on the gains, helping the government start reconstruction projects and improve services, giving ordinary people a reason to put their faith in Iraq's leaders and not armed militias.

"Right now is that time on the battlefield when we shift our effort from ... destructive operations to rebuilding," Martin said. "One day, you're leading combat patrols; the next day ... working with councils for electrical and sewer projects."

U.S. and Iraqi officials say that strategy is paying off and they are confident security has improved enough to start major works on the road and overhaul water and sewerage pipes underneath.

"Each day's a little better than the last," Major-General Jeffery Hammond, the commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, told Reuters. (Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed)

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