This warm summer may make you sweat, may wilt your flowers, but it is also saving taxpayers money as construction is accelerated on road projects across King County.

"This looks like another record construction year for the King County Department of Transportation," said County Executive Ron Sims. "Over the past several years, we’ve been able to maximize road dollars by doing business differently. Thanks to funding flexibility – and the great weather we’ve had this summer – we have made significant progress on some major projects for the 2003 construction season."

Sims visited several construction projects with staff from the county’s Road Services Division today to get a first-hand look at the accelerated projects in the Renton-Maple Valley area. But there are many more, including:

"This has been a season with near-perfect construction conditions," said Linda Dougherty, director of the roads division. "Our division is in the midst of delivering more than $90 million worth of road improvements this year, which represents a record for us."

Both Dougherty and Sims said this kind of fast-paced construction would not have been possible without a series of reforms set in motion five years ago to bring as much traffic relief as possible to rapidly growing communities in unincorporated King County.

"Projects like 140^th Avenue Southeast, the North Sammamish Plateau Access Road (SPAR), and South 277^th Street between Kent and Auburn would not be under construction or scheduled for construction had we not recognized that we needed to move more quickly to get projects on the ground to respond to growth and our mounting traffic problems," said Sims.

The flexible funding strategy allows the Roads Division to accelerate projects ready to go, if others are held up due to permitting problems or other reasons. It also allows Roads to make small-scale changes to projects without having to go through an additional approval process, which saves more time and money.