'Massive disruption' warning over year-long works between two roundabouts

National Highways says the road is 'coming to the end of its serviceable life'

A bus operator fears a year-long project to resurface roads between two major Nottingham roundabouts will create "massive disruption" in the city. The managing director of Trentbarton says that without a priority for buses, "everything around the western side of the city" will become backed up with traffic.

National Highways is carrying out the work on the A52 between the Priory roundabout and the QMC roundabout. The agency says the stretch of road "is coming to the end of its serviceable life".

As well as resurfacing the road, National Highways is building a combined cycleway and footway on the eastbound side of the A52, upgrading drainage and improving lighting. The work will last from spring 2025 until spring 2026, though no exact dates have been confirmed yet.

Tom Morgan, managing director of Trentbarton, said: "The works between Priory Island and QMC are going to cause massive disruption to everything around that western side of the city that come in via QMC. Inevitably, residual traffic will end up either going up onto Ilkeston Road or it'll come past the university south entrance.

"We've been lobbying to say we should be prioritising bus movements. University Boulevard, for example, is dual lane in both directions and we've been pushing to say one of those should be a bus lane.

"Then we should be encouraging people to use the bus, to prioritise buses, make sure they're not stuck in the congestion, encourage people to get on board and we can move them more efficiently if they were to do that. We'd be able to put additional buses on to move the volume of people.