A TRAFFIC scheme, delayed for 10 months, is finally set to start in a busy Worcester street.

The Angel Street bollards are due to be in use by mid-November, from 10.30am until 4.30pm every day.

They were originally installed in January, to try and restrict the amount of traffic using the street.

But Worcester City Council engineers discovered an electronic glitch in the £30,000 scheme, which caused computer programmers to go back to the drawing board.

Boomerang buses fitted with the transponders for the Worcester scheme were already carrying software for a similar scheme in Cheltenham.

Each town and city installed with restrictive bollards has its own signal which can't be recognised by visiting buses with other sensors.

"Midland Red have fitted all the tags and they have been tested," said Andy Walford, principal engineer at Worcester City Council.

"They generally work well, but the tags on the larger buses needed to be repositioned because they weren't passing over the loop.

"We want to make sure everything is working properly before we start the scheme."

More than 200 buses have been fitted with the new software, as well as emergency service vehicles and other authorised traffic.

"We're looking forward to this revolutionary concept developing around Worcester to enhance the quality of public transport," said Austin Birks, of First Midland Red.

"It will be of great benefit, both for safety and time-saving."

The bollards are already in place beside the McDonald's restaurant on Angel Street, allowing buses to pull off the road away from traffic in The Cross before the bollards are lowered.

If the system proves to be successful, the council hopes it will pave the way for others like it throughout the city.

The next area set to introduce bollards is the Lowesmoor bus lane, but that will not be in place until next April, at the earliest.