Bus passengers in Kidlington can look forward to quicker journeys as work starts on a new 330-yard bus lane.

The £400,000 scheme, along Oxford Road and around Kidlington roundabout, will allow buses to avoid the queues at this busy bottleneck and join the existing bus lane south of the roundabout on their journeys into Oxford.

The bus lane will make journey times more predictable and help improve the reliability of the service.

Work starts today, and will last about 10 weeks.

David Robertson, the county council's cabinet member for transport, said: "We're working hard to make travelling on the bus between Oxford and Kidlington a smoother experience.

"This is the latest in a series of initiatives and I hope the new bus lane will have the desired effect in reducing journey times even further."

The work follows several years of consultation with local people, who were instrumental in deciding how bus journeys could best be improved between the village and city centre. Council planners presented several designs for schemes at an exhibition in Exeter Hall, and public comments from this helped the council to decide where to spend the money.

The bus lane will be the latest in a series of measures to improve the service between Kidlington and Oxford.

Oxfordshire County Council has introduced bus priority at traffic lights in the village and improved the stops with new shelters, flags, information cases and 'real time' information while the bus companies have invested in new vehicles.