On Tuesday, March 22 Colliery Way, formerly the Gedling Access Road, opened for the very first time. The route has undergone a number of alterations over the years having been in the pipeline since as early as the 1930s. Upon the completion of the 3.8km route, Agenda Editor Joseph Locker speaks to one man who has been involved in the project since the beginning to find out just how it finally came to be.
The original route of the Gedling Access Road had been proposed to run through Shearing Hill, cutting Gedling village in two. It has been drawn up as early as the 1930s but soon met strong opposition into the latter part of the century when plans began to gain footing.
Hundreds of people attended a public meeting, with residents having set up the Gedling Village Preservation Society in 1977 to oppose the original route. Many argued it would result in the loss of treasured green space, including Willow Park, as well as dividing a rich community for no good reason.
During a meeting in May of 1986 the original route was scrapped, but the safeguarded plans were kept on low heat. Dave Pick, a principle transport planner of 38 years at Nottinghamshire County Council, said the project remained a "live scheme" in 1983 when he started out in his role.
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A new route was established upon the closure of Gedling Colliery in 1991, which presented a more suitable option, and in the years following the Government was relentlessly lobbied until finally sufficient funding was granted.
"The route was different to the route that was finally built. It used to go through Gedling village which would have severed the community," Mr Pick told Nottinghamshire Live.
"Due to local pressure that was moved to this route back in the mid-80s and we have lobbied the Government for funding ever since. There were a large number of schemes competing for very little money and across the East Midlands and it had to wait its turn for funding.
"It has taken many years to get to the stage where there were sufficient funds to justify the improvements."
The road was to complete the Eastern Outer Loop Road, the works for which began in the 1980s. Lady Bay Bridge was eventually designated a road crossing over the River Trent, while Daleside Road was extended and Colwick Loop Road and Trent Valley Road were built.
And in 1996 the current route for the GAR was adopted. Mr Pick says there was "elation" in the council when a the bid to Government was successful.
Planning permission was granted in 2014, Mr Pick said, shortly before the success of the bid was revealed mid-2015, around five or six years ago.
"These decisions are not taken lightly and it has to compete across the country and to actually be successful is a very rewarding part of the job after many years of work on this particular project," he said.
"You can finally touch it after all these years."
Upon his appointment Mr Pick was tasked with conducting traffic assessments and helped devise the business case submission to the Government. His wider work included working out how traffic would be displaced, how much relief there would be in the village as well as the sizes of junctions on the route.
"It has to have design life into the future," he added.
"We can't just build it and say it works on day one and then it falls over on day two. You have to plan 15 or 20 years into the future.
"I can't believe I'm stood here witnessing it. It has been a green field for so long that it is hard to believe it is here."
A consortium, made up of the county council, Gedling Borough Council, Homes England, Keepmoat Homes, the developer behind Chase Farm, and the D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership, was set up to help finance the project. Current Labour Group leader Kate Foale says then-Gedling MP, Vernon Coaker, was also key at the time in helping the borough and county council lobby for the first tranche funding for the scheme as early as 2013.
Work eventually commenced in January 2020, a matter of weeks before the country was placed into lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. While this did indeed have an impact, including an eventual delay and costs soaring by an additional £8.6m, work continued to press ahead.
Some residents nearby have also complained of dust and noise during the construction of the bypass and preservation of the historic 'pepperpots' was brought to the attention of planners before any tools were put to work. One has consequently been preserved while the Mapperley Tunnel now runs directly beneath the embankment which now holds up the road.
The GAR was then renamed Colliery Way to pay homage to the area's mining heritage. In total workers laid 45,000 tonnes of tarmac and shifted more than 200 Olympic swimming pools-worth of dirt to construct the colossal embankment which now runs parallel to Arnold Lane.
The 3.8km route spans from Mapperley Plains to the A612 Colwick Loop Road and brought with it a number of ecological and environmental benefits. This includes a wooden house, costing roughly £200,000, made exclusively for the native bat population as well as seven badger tunnels, seven bat hop-overs, six amphibian tunnels and improved pedestrian and cycle links to Gedling Country Park.
Local leaders have already been looking at what comes next upon the completion of the bypass. Many are hoping it will one day compliment another crossing over the River Trent. The need for another crossing became starkly apparent upon the emergency closure of Clifton Bridge two years ago.
Hopes for a motor traffic bridge are not necessarily new, but plans and discussions were met with certain levels of red tape while Kay Cutts was leader of the county council. No agreement could be secured on where exactly the bridge should be built.
Mansfield's Conservative MP Ben Bradley, who became the new council leader in 2021, says this red tape is no more and discussions have been taking place every since to get the ball rolling. As was the case with the Gedling Access Road project, securing funding is now the next major hurdle to tackle.
"We've been chipping away at projects across the county, we've built the eastern outer loop road, we've built the Colwick Loop Road, we've built the section from Victoria Retail Park to Burton Joyce and incrementally we've built the route from Lady Bay Bridge right the way to Mapperley Plains," Mr Pick added.
"It has taken over 50 years, a long time, to get there and now we've got the whole thing. The next thing is the bridge campaign over the Trent down to the A46 which I'm sure will be looked at in the future. But again it is a long-term project."
Speaking at an opening event for Colliery Way the leader of Gedling Borough Council, councillor John Clarke, said: "That bridge needs building over the Trent. It is one piece of the big jigsaw.
"It shows what we can do when all the political spectrums work together."
