LEBANON — More than a half-dozen intersections will go under the bulldozer this summer as Warren County heads into its second year of a $12 million road improvement program.

        The record financial commitment by county commissioners meant improvements to even more roads in 2000, including widening Columbia Road in Deerfield Township and lopping off the top of the hill where Hart and Kirby intersect north of Lebanon.

        The road work is the county's response to the influx of residents and businesses that has made it the second-fastest-growing county in Ohio the past decade.

        However, it's not always popular with drivers who are temporarily inconvenienced, or residents who worry improvements will bring increased traffic.

        “You call those improvements?” Hillary Schwartz of Snider Road in Symmes Township said of work to add turn lanes from Fields Ertel Road onto Snider at the Warren-Hamilton county line.

        Extra traffic will hurt property values in the residential neighborhood, Ms. Schwartz said.

        But the projects already on the books won't be the end of road work in Warren County. The commissioners decided this month to commission a study of 17 additional intersections countywide. The state will pay two-thirds of the study's $87,900 cost.

        “We know that we have a fairly high accident rate at each of these intersections,” Mr. Tunison said.

        Work at Fields Ertel — a joint project with Hamilton County — is expected to be finished by October. The removal of a hump on Ohio 123 at Waynesville also has started. It has a July completion date.

        Drivers should expect construction to start at these locations later:

        • Butler-Warren at Bethany and Mason roads. Turn lanes will be added.

        • Manchester at Dixie Highway. Turn lanes will be added.

        • Socialville-Foster at Columbia. Turn lane will be added.

        • Stubbs Mill at Shawhan. The road will be realigned.

        • Greentree east of Ohio 741. The road will be straightened.

        Mr. Tunison also will meet with Turtlecreek Township trustees at the end of April to continue working on a solution to teen drivers' hill-hopping on McClure Road.

        Two other projects — realignments to improve drivers' sight distance on Hendrickson at Union and Morrow-Woodville at Jackson-Runyan — had been planned for 2001 but now are questionable, Mr. Tunison said.

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