THE winner of a £245m contract to upgrade a 33-mile stretch of the A1 to motorway standard has been confirmed by the Highways Agency.

Road Management Services (Darrington) Ltd has been awarded the task, and hopes to start work on the stretch of dual-carriageway between Darrington to the south and Dishforth in the north as early as April.

RMS is wholly owned by Amec, Alfred McAlpine, Dragados and Kellogg Brown and Root (the Road Management Group).

The main benefit of the new motorway will be the final demise of the bottlenecks between Ferrybridge and Hook Moor and between Wetherby and Walshford.

The building project is scheduled to finish by 2006, but the innovative design-build-finance-operate contract also ties the company to the completed motorway once construction is complete.

Road Management Services will be among the first to remain responsible for maintenance and will be paid by the Government on a sliding scale, linked to safety and the amount of congestion on the new road.

If the firm can come up with projects which reduce accidents, keep jams to a minimum and limit disruption caused by maintenance, the financial rewards will be higher.

The new road's performance will be monitored via sensors in the road which will keep track of traffic speed, feeding information back to a central processing system.

It is hoped the performance-linked contract will encourage Road Management Services to carry out repairs at night as often as possible.

Highways Agency project leader Alec Briggs said: "This is an innovative payment mechanism.

"The built-in incentives to the operator have been designed to help us to achieve our three key priorities - reducing congestion, enhancing the reliability of journey times, and improving safety for all road users on this very busy route.''

Last June, roads minister John Spellar also confirmed the Government's plans to upgraded the A1 north from Dishforth to Barton, near Scotch Corner, bringing the advantages of Britain's motorway network to businesses in the North-East.

In all, investment in the A1 in Yorkshire is expected to total more than £520m.