Please note that this article was originally published in the Pedals Newsletter of Spring / Summer 2025 (no. 121), with a minor update on 18 June 2025
Update on the 25+ year saga of the Pedals Campaign to upgrade the subway-underpass under the A52 south of Sharp Hill, West Bridgford
Longstanding Pedals supporters will be well aware of our campaign going back over 25 years, to get National Highways (and its various predecessor) to upgrade the subway underpass under the A52 Trunk Road south of Sharp Hill, West Bridgford, as the centre piece, with other improvements, of a longer route connecting Ruddington with the Sharp Hill and Edwalton areas on the south and east sides of West Bridgford.
For many years we seemed to make very slow progress. However, in 2021, the year after many people during lockdown discovered this much neglected facility and wondered why they had not known about it before and why it was in such an appalling state.
Nottinghamshire Ramblers and other local groups, including the British Horse Society, then got involved and a much higher profile campaign was launched in 2021 under the banner of the A52 Active Travel Partnership Safe Crossings campaign.
We then launched a petition to get wider public support and this soon attracted more than 2000 signatures, which was very encouraging.
We then presented the petition to National Highways and got the support both of Ruth Edwards, the former MP for Rushcliffe, and Councillor Neil Clarke who at that time was the County Council Portfolio Holder for Transport and Environment.
A feasibility study was then commissioned by National Highway to investigate upgrading of the subway-underpass and its main approaches and this report, by Tetratech Ltd., was published in March 2022.
However further progress since then has been very slow mainly because of the difficulties National Highways then encountered in negotiating with the major landowner involved on the north side of A52.
They wanted to acquire land to help provide a good connection thinking that this could not be done wholly within the land they already owned.
The A52 Active Travel Partnership have always been keen to get the upgrading of the subway-underpass included in the wider proposals for the two nearby major junctions on the A52, on which National Highways first consulted in January 2019. These are the A52/A606 Nottingham Knight junction and the A52/A606 Lings Bar / Wheatcroft junction.
However National Highways preferred to regard the subway-underpass as a separate scheme, and this meant that when they came to start the process of compulsory acquisition of land for the both roundabouts they did not include in this CPO area the subway-underpass site which was left just outside to the west.
The Ramblers in particular were keen to stress that this meant that when the new junction changes were made at the Wheatcroft / Lings Bar roundabout that there would still be a very dangerous crossing point for Bridleway 2 which runs between the south and east sides of Mickleborough Hill and the Aldi. etc retail park off Landmere Lane.
They argued that it would be much safer for this bridleway to be diverted through the subway with its status being upgraded from a public footpath, as it has been for about 10 years, into a bridleway.
Pedals and other groups in the Partnership supported this view and this remains the key objection to the proposals.
Pedals is also keen to see wider changes including improvements to the condition and surface of the subway and its various approaches on both sides of the A52, including traffic-calming on the connecting sections of Landmere Lane and Old Loughborough Road on the Ruddington side of the A52.
In the longer term we see upgrading of the subway-underpass as the most vital improvement to help develop a longer cycle route connecting Ruddington, including Rushcliffe Country Park, with Edwalton and Melton Road, and the wider east side of West Bridgford, including the various improved routes being developed in the new major housing development at Edwalton Fields, with connections to Rushcliffe Spencer Academy, and to the Green Line north towards the centre of West Bridgford.
This is a public footpath but with concessionary right for cyclists.
Several sections of the planned shared paths north of the A52 have in fact now been built, e.g east of Sharp Hill, and between Boundary Road and Stanier Drive, although these do not yet connect coherently and direction signing so far is mostly lacking, as it continues to be, despite our repeated protests, on the nearby shared paths on the A606 (Melton Road), between Village Street and Landmere Lane, otherwise completed in 2023.
To bring this report up to date, the Active Travel Partnership, coordinated by Steve Parkhouse of the Ramblers, and others interested, have the opportunity to argue our case further at the forthcoming public inquiry which has now been fixed by National Highways to start on the 8th of July 2025. The Pedals Proof of Evidence was submitted on 17 June 2025.
This will examine the both the compulsory purchase order (CPO) for the whole scheme and the side road orders (SDOs) for the whole scheme.
Among the other people supporting our case are local Ruddington Rushcliffe Councillor Jen Walker and former Rushcliffe Councillor Rod Jones, who, as well as being a keen cyclist, has a long-standing record in addressing rights of way issues in the wider Sharp Hill and Landmere Lane areas.
Our battle therefore continues. Watch this space!