Whitebirk roundabout has been a thorn in the side of commuters for decades, a bottleneck which leaves people crawling into Blackburn at busy times.

Now highways bosses believe a new scheme to install traffic lights and bus lanes will finally provide an end to the misery.

The roundabout, at junction six of the M65, serves two of the main routes into Blackburn, along with the principle road to Rishton and is the area's worst accident blackspot.

Work will start in January next year, although a completion date has not yet been revealed.

But it can only be hoped that this attempt at solving the gridlock is more successful than the county council's attempt at a quick fix.

Its white traffic markings caused even more delays when they went down last year.

The roundabout was originally created when planners envisaged the M65 running around the edge of Blackburn town centre, rather than around the borough boundary as it does now.

The unnecessarily large carriageway encourages drivers to speed, according to highways bosses.

The new work will also remove one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the creation of the East Lancashire Gateway business park at Whitebirk, which is being funded by the North West Development Agency and should attract an inital 2,000 jobs to the area.

Motorists across East Lancashire will be hoping that the scheme works - and does not become a daily reminder of more bad planning and a mis-spent £3million.