How can anything work in Cambridgeshire when five bodies have responsibilities and receive funding for transport?
Author - Edward Leigh
The good, the bad and the ugly
The mayor’s recently-published Interim Transport Strategy Statement re-confirms his ambitions for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
Why is the County Council moving to Alconbury Weald?
The County Council has voted to move its base from Castle Hill in Cambridge to Alconbury Weald. It's a done deal.
Sequencing is critical
Why increasing road capacity with more lanes just buys time ...and worse, the business case for the sustainable stuff evaporates
A ‘people centric’ strategy or perpetual congestion?
Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) published a report in March that deserves more attention than its uninspiring title and status suggest.
Why a £13m overspend in Ely matters
The Ely Southern Bypass is £21m over its original budget. We should be extremely wary of funding large infrastructure projects from council borrowing not covered by new income streams.
We’re at a tipping point in the south of Cambridge
What’s the answer? We’ve been shouting it from the rooftops for nearly three years.
“So there you have it: don’t depend on buses.”
Significant delays or cancellations within a bus operator’s control should be penalised in a way that benefits users.
A service level agreement for bus travel
Less variability in journey times is not actually what most people who use buses complain about. Missing a connection because of delay is a big headache. It’s why people don’t like having to change buses.
Haverhill Rail: the Missing A1307 Option
A conservative extrapolation from the St Ives busway to the Haverhill railway provides a forecast of about 4.5m trips/year. So why isn’t reopening the railway still under consideration?
This is not an infrastructure project!
One Ticket, One Network, One Brand here will do more to achieve modal shift than rolling out some red tarmac for a few buses a day.
Start with the quick wins
Let's see action on interventions that can make a difference now, while the Combined Authority gets the longer term strategy right.
Lessons for Cambridge from Singapore
London does integrated transport pretty well. Arguably Singapore does it better. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough's mayor can learn from both.
A bridge over Foxton level crossing
There's a plan to re-route the A10 via a bridge or underpass and close the level crossing at Foxton. Unfortunately, as with Skanska's proposal for Whittlesford, the scope is too narrow.
Whittlesford station: the neglected gateway
Whittlesford has a neglected station with poor access. Upgraded to 'Parkway' status in 2007, it still lacks basic facilities like toilets or a bridge between the platforms suitable for people with limited mobility.
Mass Transit Options Report does not meet the brief
Smarter Cambridge Transport has described a report on future transport options for the region as not meeting its brief.
Smarter Cambridge Transport: continuing to ask the questions
Smarter Cambridge Transport is growing, and in 2018 we'll continue to put forward the ideas and ask the questions. Here's how.
Smarter Cambridge Transport: our journey to date
Smarter Cambridge Transport came together to advance integrated, innovative and sustainable transport ideas. So, how have we done?
Before we build that bus-, rail-, or AVRT-way…
Are we using the County Council’s Long Term Transport Plan or not? The GCP and the mayor can't pick and choose.
Why we’re getting a Cambourne-Cambridge busway
You maybe didn’t realise it at the time, but in 2014 you agreed to the County Council’s Long Term Transport Strategy.
More use of the southern busway please!
The guided busway between Trumpington Park & Ride and Cambridge station is underused. How could we make more use of it?
Let’s have a Big Data Dig
GCP indicate that they will publish the raw data from their recent traffic survey in 2018. Why is it taking so long to release?
Fixing the Grafton Area
The Grafton Centre itself is undergoing a facelift, but the area needs more than that. These are some additional ideas we’ve submitted to the consultation.
Nodes before modes
Notice what’s missing in discussion about tunnels? Any mention of people. Forgive me repeating myself, but transport is about moving people (and goods) not vehicles.
Lobby politicians, not officers
There is one feature of the local government system that’s simple: politicians set policy; officers advise and deliver. So who should people lobby?
Releasing Drummer St bus station from its dreary existence
The councils’ strategy for coping with growth is to have many more people commute by bus, but there’s no strategy yet for how to accommodate all the extra buses in the city.
A hard-headed look at buses
You probably know you can get a guided bus from Cambridge to Huntingdon? It takes 1hr 7mins. You can save yourself 14 minutes by catching the Whippet X3, which runs via Cambourne and Papworth – yes, via Cambourne. Take...
Cambourne needs a bus station
The Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) is deeply mired in complexity and controversy over building a busway from Cambourne, an orbital link to Addenbrooke’s, and a new Park & Ride west of Cambridge. It has spent...
What are we trying to achieve for Milton Road?
Despite valiant efforts by the new team leading the Milton Road City Deal scheme, their ‘Final Concept’ still fails the 8-80 age test for cycling and provides much less green space than the community-backed ‘Do Optimum’...
Trumpington Park & Ride
The sudden and unexpected withdrawal of Grosvenor’s planning application for a sporting village and 520 houses south of Trumpington Meadows has created an opportunity. Some years ago the County Council negotiated a deal...
Reorganising buses is all the rage
Groningen, Oldenburg, Ghent, Hasselt, Bogotá and Algiers did it years ago. Houston and Seattle did it recently. Dublin is doing it now. Cambridge isn’t. But it should be. Houston, Texas radically simplified its bus...
Free is not always best
Recently local politicians have called for Cambridge’s Park & Ride car parks to be free again, and MPs have called for hospital car parks to be made free. ‘Free’ means somebody else is paying, in this case taxpayers...
Do I have to take a taxi from the station?
If we want to make Cambridge railway station less car dependent, what more could we do to promote walking, cycling and bus travel? Many visitors arriving at the station take a taxi simply because other options are...
More space for living, less for parking
You may be aware that Murdoch House, on the corner of Cambridge’s Station Square, is set to be replaced, but did you know that more buildings are planned to go up on the car park? Initial designs (currently being...
A lesson from Plymouth
In the excellent Urban Transport Without The Hot Air by Steve Melia, there’s a study that has important implications for Cambridge and Cambourne. Ivybridge is a small town in Devon, just under 10 miles from Plymouth...
Time for a railway station at Fulbourn Hospital
One of the great frustrations with transport planning in the UK is that it is easier, quicker and often cheaper for a local authority to build a new road than it is for the same local authority, Network Rail and train...
Invest in rail, not dualling the A10
The argument for dualling the A10 from Ely is that it requires more capacity to cope with population growth; that slow commute times put fewer jobs within commuting distance and reduce economic productivity (though, for...
Neighbourhood parking: what it’s really about
The County Council highways committee voted last week to pass a new policy on neighbourhood parking – to be precise, they passed half a policy. New types of permit will be available, including for tradespeople, doctors...
Bus franchising: a golden opportunity
The Bus Services Bill allows the mayor here in Cambridgeshire to adopt London-style franchising of bus services. This is a golden opportunity for innovation.
What is ‘Inbound Flow Control’?
You will know that the City Deal has plans (“but no decisions have been made yet”) to build a busway from Cambourne to Cambridge, to add more bus lanes to Milton Road, and to build a bus lane on Histon Rd between King’s...
Should Park & Ride parking be free?
Cambridge’s MP and all three voting members of the City Deal Executive Board have called for the £1 parking charge at Park & Ride sites to be removed. The intention is good, but the policy is wrong. The seven...
Where is the vision?
A refrain running through many of the questions to the City Deal is, “Where is the vision?” When Smarter Cambridge Transport put this question to the board last week, the audience was treated to three slides with vision...
What is Tactical Urbanism?
Transport planning is like economics: many competing theories, a tendency to examine measurable things (like traffic) and ignore the actors (people), and limited success in making accurate predictions. Traditionally...
Ways in which we must follow Anne Hidalgo’s lead
Think of a mayor. Perhaps Boris Johnson springs to mind? A man whose pre-Brexit legacy was to start a cycling revolution in London: ‘Boris bikes’ and cycle superhighways. Maybe Rudy Giuliani? Famous for Zero Tolerance...
Some New Year’s Resolutions for 2017
Have you thought about New Year’s Resolutions? Well, here are a few suggestions: 1. Get fit and save money: no need to buy gym membership; just fit walking and maybe cycling into your daily routine. Maybe try not...
Only Connect: a pretty good motto for public transport
Before Victoria Coren claimed ownership of “Only Connect,” it was E M Forster’s, extolling humans’ need to for connection. It’s also a pretty good motto for public transport: we spend a lot of time talking about cars...
Who will ensure that excellent design is at the heart of new developments?
The recently formed National Infrastructure Commission has published its report on the Cambridge–Milton Keynes–Oxford corridor. It identifies a chronic shortage of housing as the greatest risk to growth. Unsurprisingly...
A14 Girton Interchange (archived page)
How Highways England's improvements to the A14 Girton Interchange should provide new connections between the A428 and M11, and a new Park & Ride.
A Metro for Cambridge
There has been great interest in the light rail scheme proposed by Cambridge Connect. It’s obvious why: rail services are easy to understand, reliable, safe, comfortable and usually come with high quality stations...
Cambourne to Cambridge busway
The City Deal is proposing spending a £142m on a new road for buses from Cambourne to Cambridge. That might seem like a good idea, especially if you live in Cambourne, Highfields Caldecote or Hardwick and commute into...