The Great Yorkshire Way has changed that. This link road connects Doncaster directly to the M18, providing quick and easy access to the M1, A1(M) and M180. Completed in June 2018, the road will bring jobs, investment and regeneration to a region where they were desperately needed. But it almost didn’t get off the ground.
Opportunity
The £56M Great Yorkshire Way connecting Doncaster Sheffield Airport with the M18 motorway provides a vital new transport link and unlocks significant development opportunities. But the early days of the project were uncertain: financial support from the Department for Transport was unavailable, and without it the initial scheme design was unaffordable. We were appointed to reduce costs and attract alternative funding.
Solution
The initial scheme was for dual carriageway from end-to-end, much raised on embankments. We reanalysed traffic forecasts to show that dual lanes were needed over only a short length of the route, thereafter reducing to single carriageway, and that a section of the route could be removed altogether. These changes almost halved the £100M estimated cost while still delivering major benefits. We then helped to secure an £18M Regional Growth Fund grant and £34M from the client’s private sector partners. Our approach to problem solving and engagement with stakeholders produced an overwhelmingly positive response. Mayor of Doncaster Ros Jones praised the project as: “a great advertisement for collaboration between the public and private sectors”.
Outcome
The Great Yorkshire Way has doubled the number of people who live within half an hour’s drive of Doncaster Sheffield Airport to one million, and increased the number who live within an hour’s drive from five to six million. With the second largest runway in the north of England, the road was the final piece of the jigsaw in terms of infrastructure that will allow the airport to operate on a much larger scale. Linking the road to Rossington has initiated construction of 1200 homes, commercial buildings, food and retail outlets, a school and a health centre on the site of derelict Rossington Colliery, breathing new life into Rossington village. It has also unlocked development of the £300M iPort, a revolutionary logistics park that will combine 6M sq ft of warehousing with a freight rail interchange. It’s anticipated that the iPort will provide up to 5000 new jobs. Ros Jones described the Great Yorkshire Way as “a regeneration road that is second to none”.