It has taken a long and often frustrating campaign by residents and their champions, but bit by bit the nightmare roundabout at Five Lane Ends is being made more pedestrian friendly.

News that the Council has agreed to spend £62,200 on a new pelican crossing in Swain House Road will be seen in the area as a very welcome Christmas present, particularly by the many elderly people who live nearby.

After the Morrisons E5 development was built in 1986 the amount of traffic using the already busy roundabout at Five Lane Ends increased dramatically. The answer was to remodel the roundabout to accommodate two lanes of traffic. That meant, though, that the roads joining the roundabout also carried two lanes of traffic in each direction, making it very difficult for pedestrians to cross.

Daily, people can be seen standing at the edge of the kerb, looking anxiously for a gap in the traffic flow which will enable them to dash to the safety refuge in the middle of the road. Some older people have even resorted to catching the bus to take them across the roundabout.

Now they will at least be able to cross Swain House Road in safety when the new crossing is added to the one recently installed across Bradford Road. However, it is to be hoped that lessons have been learned from the siting of that first crossing. It has been criticised for being too close to the roundabout, causing traffic to back up around it when the lights change to red to allow people to cross, converting a hazard for pedestrians into one for drivers.

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