They didn’t beat the deadline by much, but the city deserves applause for finishing downtown construction projects before the students’ return.

As irritating as the summer’s street and utility work in Lawrence has been, city officials deserve a pat on the back for finishing projects that spurred major traffic problems in the downtown area before Kansas University and Haskell students returned for the fall semester.

Too often, it seems that projects that restrict and reroute traffic in Lawrence have been ill-timed to coincide with the peak traffic created by students returning to campus and crowds for home football games. This year, the road crews officially closed the trenches and declared the downtown water project done for the summer on Friday, just two days ahead of the opening of student housing at KU on Sunday.

Traffic still is restricted on West Sixth Street, but city officials have promised that Wakarusa Drive north of Sixth Street will be open this week in time to accommodate traffic to Free State High School when classes start.

Maybe construction was aided by favorable weather; maybe the city’s planning was a little more on target this year. Whatever the reason, it’s nice to have most of the summer’s work projects wrapped up in a timely manner.