Parts of a major summer road improvement programme in southern Scotland are still taking place in November.

The upgrades in Dumfries were meant to be carried out mainly during the school holidays with the last ones completed by the first week in September.

However, the road closure signs have gone up again this week causing travel headaches and traffic queues at peak hours.

Local bus operators say it can lead to their customers becoming angry and abusive. Dumfries and Galloway Council has blamed the weather and other "operational pressures" for the work overrunning.

Lennie Morris, a depot supervisor with Houston's Coaches, said they did not like having "dropped runs" - ones when a driver is unable to finish one run on time to carry out the next.

He said that left the general public "struggling to get to where they need to be".

"The drivers are out there for anything from eight to 12 hours a day and they are doing their very best to serve the public, as they do every day," he said.

"When they face situations like this people get frustrated, people get angry, people get abusive.

"So the drivers then have to deal with that as well as the stress of struggling to get the job done in the way that they want to do it professionally."

This week one of the two roads crossings the River Nith at Buccleuch Street has been closed, followed by another route nearby.

The situation has been complicated by work already taking place on the Whitesands - which runs next to the river - due to flood defence installation.

Morris said his company was having to reroute a "significant number of services" but that had a knock-on effect.

"What that does is that displaces traffic onto other roads that become extremely busy because car drivers, truck drivers, van drivers, they all have to reroute as well," he said.

"Some routes are affected more than others, that is, directly.

"But because of the displacement of traffic, the routes that aren't involved with the actual closure, they still suffer just because of the volume of traffic."

Morris said it had been going on for a long time and there did not seem to have been much consideration for bus routes in planning the work.

He said Dumfries was a small town with only a few main routes into and out of it and a couple of them had been effectively closed by the work.

"It's essentially about nurses, shop workers, everybody in the town that's trying to get to work, regardless of what they do," he said.

"From a solicitor to a doctor to a nurse, it doesn't matter what they're trying to do.

"They use the buses, especially the hospital one, and it's difficult to get the guys where they need to be on time."

Dumfries and Galloway Council said it had been delivering an extensive programme of improvement works in the town alongside wider investment in the east of the region.

"Weather conditions and other operational pressures have resulted in some works taking longer than originally anticipated, while the service has also continued to deliver other planned works across the road network," it said in a statement.

"As a result, completion of some elements of the summer programme has extended into the autumn."

More work will also be required on a number of routes which have seen improvements but have been without markings for weeks.

"Road marking works are currently under way across Dumfries and Galloway, with further replacement lining scheduled over the coming weeks," the council said.

"These works are particularly dependent on suitable weather conditions, which can affect when individual sections can be completed."