SAFETY improvement work is under way on a busy main road which carries thousands of cars through Greenock every day.

The council is spending around £12,500 installing chicanes to make Dunlop Street more safe for pedestrians, by reducing the speed of drivers.

Notre Dame High School is on the street, with hundreds of pupils crossing it every day.

Campaigners have called for traffic calming measures on the stretch of the A78 route for many years and a public consultation was carried out to decide what to do.

Not everyone was in agreement about the chosen scheme and the work was held up because a public hearing had to be held after two individuals objected.

Roads bosses are installing the chicanes on the section between Nimmo Street and Wallace Street.

The council says the work is expected to take around three weeks to complete.

A spokesperson for Inverclyde Council said: “We have received numerous requests to install traffic calming to slow down the vehicles on Dunlop Street.

"Following an extensive consultation we have now developed a scheme which should reduce vehicle speeds to around 20mph.

"This will have the added benefit of also slowing down the traffic around Notre Dame High School.

“We carried out an extensive public consultation into the proposals and also held a public hearing to address two outstanding objections."

The council says it hopes that motorists will understand why they will be travelling more slowly along the key artery.

Their spokesman told the Telegraph: “We appreciate that Dunlop Street is a busy road but safety has to be our priority.”