With a new finish date set for the bus corridor being created on Wakefield Road / Burton Road, Katia Harston went to see the progress made so far.
Work to the new bus corridor started in December 2010 and Coun Roy Miller has said it should be finished by September.
However, works have rumbled on for more than two-and-a-half years, testing drivers' patience. Many are fed up of being caught in congestion and complained little work seemed to be being done on site.
Coun Miller explained a lot of the work had been underground, away from the public eye.
A new access road and improvements to Burton Road were completed in early May 2012, with a new bridge built across the entrance to the Dearne Way, a walking route which links up with the Dearne Valley Park.
The ground across the whole site had to be stabilised with more than 3,000 poles being set five metres down, and a huge underground water holding tank built to prevent flooding.
Now the road surface for the new bus lane is being laid and when that is finished, traffic will be moved on to it, allowing the other side of the road to be reconstructed.
However, despite this final push to finish, the project has been dogged with delays, including problems over land ownership, underground cables and pipes, Japanese knot weed and the largest colony of a certain type of bat in England.
Coun Miller said the council was 'held hostage' until the companies finished their works, such as Yorkshire Water lowering a mains pipe under the new bus lane.
"There was also fibre optic cables running under the site and in order to move them just a few feet, work had to be done off site as far away as Laithes Lane at Athersley.
"It may have appeared not much was happening on site, but I assure you it was progressing."
Paul Bray, the council's head of design and transportation, added: "We came across a colony of Daubentons in a culvert under the old bridge. It is the biggest roost of that type of bat in England. It took time to move them and give them a nice new home."
