MORE traffic lights are on their way in Swindon but the council hopes to ease rather than create road jams.

Work could start as early as July to install lights instead of the mini roundabout at the Mead Way junction with Stone-hill Green and Westmead Drive, near Westlea police and fire stations.

Coun Mary Martin (Con, Toothill and West-lea) said traffic lights could prove the solution to rush hour snarl-ups.

She said: "Traffic comes from West Swindon to that roundabout and it is blocked by people coming across from Westlea.

"The jams occur from about 8am to 8.30am, and on Monday mornings the queue can go back 1.5k from the roundabout.

"A journey which should take two-and-a-half minutes can take 20 minutes along that stretch of road because traffic cuts across the flow."

Coun Martin said the traffic lights should help to give more priority to traffic flowing to and from West Swindon.

Similar moves to replace mini roundabouts with traffic light junctions in Swindon have proved controversial.

This month, campaigners who fought and won a battle to reinstate the roundabout at the junction of Newport Street and Croft Road after traffic lights were installed as part of a £142,000 bus priority scheme told the Advertiser they were sure the original roundabout was back for good.

The battle to get the roundabout back started after the lights created rush hour jams in Devizes Road and Newport Street.

In April, we reported how protesters in Gorse Hill handed a petition of more than 2,000 names to North Swindon MP Michael Wills, opposing newly installed traffic lights which replaced the table junction in Gorse Hill last December.

And in February, the Advertiser revealed that road planners were to spend £80,000 converting the mini roundabout at the entrance to Swindon bus station, on the junction of Manchester Road and Aylesbury Street, into a traffic light junction.

Coun Martin added that work is also to be carried out to improve two speed bumps at the Westminster Road end of Freshbrook Way, which motorists say cause excessive jolts to cars due to the way they are angled. She said: "There is going to be a slight raising of the road surface around the humps just to ease the sharp profile which appears to be causing the problems."