VILLAGERS are demanding a new relief road to ease congestion on a busy trunk route near York and tackle rat-running along narrow country roads.

Dunnington Parish Council said the new road should run across countryside from the A1079 at Wilberfoss to the A64 east of York, where a new intersection should be built.

It claims the A1079 is becoming more congested, with traffic wanting to exit on to the Grimston Bar roundabout now queuing back as far as Kexby during the morning rush hour.

An increasing number of motorists are trying to avoid the jam by rat-running through Dunnington and other villages to get to the A166.

"Some of these vehicles even go further by using Holtby, Hopgrove and Murton village roads as ways to get to their destinations north of York," said a report by a highways group set up by the parish council.

The group claimed that growing congestion on the A1079 was being caused by hundreds of affordable homes being built in East Yorkshire, mainly for commuters to York and other cities to the west and north.

"With the continuing increase in vehicle numbers, it has become obvious that we are feeding traffic into a bottleneck - the Grimston intersection."

The group said the new road and intersection would relieve areas including Dunnington, Holtby, Hopgrove, Kexby, Murton and Osbaldwick from the ever-increasing burden of rat-running traffic.

Access to the relief road would also help Elvington, Newton-on-Derwent and Sutton-on- Derwent, situated to the south of the A1079, deal with their present and future traffic problems.

But the new A64 intersection would give York University and Grimston Park & Ride direct access to the dual carriageway.

"Heslington village would benefit due to the decrease in traffic from the university and all its commercial businesses, by using the intersection instead of overloading the village," said the report, which has been endorsed by the full council.

The report comes after the recent launch of a wider campaign, dubbed Action Access A1079, to tackle congestion and improve safety along the whole of the A1079.

Ann Reid, executive member for planning and transport at City of York Council, which is responsible for a stretch of the A1079 near York, said: "I understand that the parish council has sent documents in to council officers, and I'm sure they'll be looking at it. But in the current economic climate, I don't know where we would get the money that a scheme like that entails."

Dunnington Parish Council is now inviting representatives of parishes and groups affected by Grimston Bar, the A1079 and A166 to a meeting to be held at 7.30pm, on March 29, at the Reading Room, Dunnington.

Traffic lights to be upgraded at congestion junction

THE traffic lights at the Grimston Bar roundabout are set to be upgraded to reduce congestion.

Motorists approaching the roundabout along the A1079 have complained for some time about massive jams during the morning rush hour, often stretching back as far as Dunnington or Kexby.

The Highways Agency said today it wanted to make the lights responsive to traffic flow, so that heavy traffic building up on one approach to the roundabout would be given the green light for longer.

A spokeswoman said it also wanted to extend the lights to include the Elvington junction with the A1079, to assist Elvington motorists wanting to join and leave the main road.

She said the lights improvements were dependent on funding, and would go ahead when such funding became available.

She added that the A1079 - with the exception of the Grimston Bar junction - had now been "de-trunked", and was the responsibility of local authorities rather than the agency.

Updated: 09:51 Tuesday, March 14, 2006