Row over link road ban
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• The Highways Agency and Doncaster council chiefs are at loggerheads over a stalemate which is barring vehicles ether than buses from using a new £15m link road.
The dispute centres on a three-mile dual carriageway which links the Yorkshire Outlet shopping Centre to the Dome Leisure Park on the outskirts of Doncaster. The agency banned the council from opening the road, fearing that rush-hour traffic would use it to reach the congested M18 at Junction 3.
"We're concerned that it might become a southern bypass of Doncaster," says a spokesman for the agency, which has s ested that the council should open the road for most of the day, but close it during peak hours.
But the council has rejected this compromise. "The Agency is telling us to solve a problem before it's even happened," says development manager Mike Clinch. 'Our traffic studies show that congestion will not be a problem for at least five or 10 years. Opening and closing the road would only cause confusion and accidents."
Until the two parties thrash out a solution, the road user benefiting most from the new link road is the security guard manning the checkpoint,