Councillors Monica Morse, Warren Aubin, Jess Jennings, Jacqui Rudge and John Fry all voted on Wednesday night to wait for yet another report before finally starting work to improve the intersection of Mitre, Suttor and Lambert streets at West Bathurst.

So Bathurst Regional Council’s new stated position is that something should be done, but we’re not sure what.

It’s the same position the communities to the west of the Bathurst CBD have had to endure for the past 20 years, and that’s the reason Kent and Dianne McNab have been to every council meeting for the past year and a half to try and rouse councillors from their slumber.

They have won some support within the chamber, most vocally in the form of new councillor Alex Christian, while long-serving councillors Ian North and Bobby Bourke have always supported a roundabout.

But the McNabs aren’t traffic experts and while he works as a police officer, neither is Cr Christian. Which is why they have consistently relied on the reports written by council’s own engineers as the basis for their lobbying for a roundabout.

While Cr Morse on Wednesday night was happy to quote a 1997 traffic engineer’s that recommended either a roundabout or traffic lights, she dismissed Cr Christian’s attempts to pass her the 2017 report that clearly favoured a roundabout as the preferred option.

In truth, most residents who use that intersection probably don’t mind much which option is finally approved – they just want to see something done to end the morning and afternoon ritual of school children and motorists running the gauntlet and hoping for the best.

So they will not be pleased to read that another delay has been thrown in their face while council (again) considers its options.

Cr Morse’s determination that council makes the right choice for improving this intersection cannot be faulted but her timing is more than curious.

Last April when this matter came before council would have been the time to raise these concerns and the time to try altering the wording of the final resolution if council did not want to lock itself into building only a roundabout. But now it seems we are just going round in circles.