EASY does it... an 8.5-tonne steel beam is carefully lifted into place over the A64 near York in the latest phase of construction of a new flyover.

A 100-tonne crane was needed to hoist the 22-metre bridge beams into place earlier this week.

The £11.3 million flyover is being built to improve safety on the dual carriageway at Bilbrough Top, between York and Tadcaster.

The flyover, due for completion by next spring, won the go-ahead after a protracted campaign by the Evening Press to close a dangerous gap in the central reservation.

The Close the Gaps campaign had been sparked in the late 1990s by a series of accidents involving vehicles passing through the gap to get across the dual carriageway.

At least two people were killed in such accidents, and another person, teenager Jamie Sanders, died while running across the A64 to catch a bus to York after finishing work one night.

The Government agreed to the scheme after Jamie's Northallerton parents had delivered a personal plea for one to ministers, saying their son would not have died had he been able to cross the A64 safely using such a structure.

The Highways Agency says the new bridge involves a five-span steel-concrete structure, with each span fitted separately over the course of the year.

It says the flyover will safely connect communities on either side of the increasingly busy dual carriageway, including Colton, Appleton Roebuck and Bilbrough, but will also provide safer access to the Bilbrough Top service area.

"It forms part of the agency's scheme to improve the quality of the A64, a core trunk road that links West Yorkshire with York and the east coast holiday resorts of Scarborough, Filey and Whitby."

A similar underpass scheme a few miles away at Copmanthorpe caused major traffic congestion in 2001, but the Bilbrough Top project has caused relatively little traffic disruption because engineers have mostly been able to keep open two lanes of traffic in each direction.

Updated: 10:13 Thursday, November 11, 2004