LIFE is about to get better for long-suffering residents of Kingskerswell...thanks to ten weeks of roadworks costing more than £500,000. Normally the prospect of digging up the highway would throw locals into a blind rage. But in this case the period of disruption is welcome because contractors are moving in to convert the ghost of the A380 from a trunk road into a gentle country track. Work is underway to introduce a variety of traffic-calming measures to slow down vehicles still using the redundant rat-run. Already, pollution levels recorded locally have plummeted in the wake of the South Devon Highway relieving it of the 40,000 vehicles which once whizzed along every day. Now the transformed route barely musters 4,000 cars, vans and lorries in 24 hours. District and county councillor Alistair Dewhirst observed: ‘With such a massive reduction in traffic come many benefits. ‘The local pollution was extremely high - but now the air quality has improved throughout the whole village, not just around the main road.’ He estimated improvements resulting from the new road had brought a positive impact to hundreds of thousands of jam-freed people. He revealed that plans were now afoot to monitor and enforce the speed limit of 50mph on the new road. He said the 50 limit had been imposed for special reasons which many speeding motorists were not aware of - to keep pollution levels down and to reduce traffic noise.