Smarter Cambridge Transport

Category - Buses

Getting the basics right for bus services

The Cambridge City Access and Public Transport Improvements report MUST set out how bus services and stops will improve markedly from 2022.

Bus back better? A new national strategy

We need bus services to work for many more people.The new national bus strategy seeks to address this, with clear and sensible ambitions.

Response to Eastern Access consultation

Smarter Cambridge Transport’s comments and additional ideas for improving access to Cambridge by cycle, bus and train from the east.

Response to Cambridge South East Transport consultation 2020

The Greater Cambridge Partnership is expected on 1 July 2021 to give the go-ahead for this scheme to proceed to its final stage before granting permission for its construction. The most recent information is available...

Too much busway, too little station

Two more public consultations recently launched illustrate just how out-of-step with the times transport authorities are.

The legacy of the Citizens Assembly

Last year a Citizens Assembly considered how to reduce congestion, improve air quality and provide better public transport. What's happened since?

How much does it cost to run a bus?

What would make the bigger difference: another 2,500 people using Park & Ride or 55,000 more people using buses in the region?

Cambridge city bus hub

Cambridge has one central hub, and secondary hubs at Cambridge station and Addenbrooke’s hospital. What are the alternatives to make it easier and quicker to travel around by bus?

Why not to trust transport forecasts

Actual costs and benefits would have given the Guided Busway a ‘poor value for money’ rating, which would not have qualified for taxpayer funding.

Why Park & Ride is NOT the solution

The social and environmental benefits of radically improving rural bus services far outweigh those of Park & Rides.

Before a congestion charge

Neither the Greater Cambridge Partnership nor the Combined Authority has a plan to transform bus services across the region.

Multi-operator bus ticketing

We just need politicians, council officers and bus operators to sit down together and agree to make this happen.

A bus journey is about the experience

Before trying to knock a few minutes off bus journey times, we need to understand that the quality of the journey experience is arguably more important to people

The Case for Bus Franchising

Planned well, franchising could deliver a Swiss-style integrated, comprehensive public bus service.

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.

Negotiating the elephant on the A1307

5,000 new jobs are coming to the Biomedical Campus by the middle of next year, with no extra transport provision for them.

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.

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.

Frequency: the key to better public transport

Imagine a gate at the end of your driveway that opens only once every 30 minutes. You cannot apply a private motorist's mentality to shaping public transport policy.

What we need right now is not a busway

For South Cambridgeshire residents, what's needed are attractive, comfortable, reliable and flexible public transport options from close to where people live.

When is a bus not a bus?

The Mayor has maintained that buses aren't the answer for the Cambridge area, so the consultants have wheeled out something vaguely called a 'metro'.

Response to ‘Cambourne to Cambridge’ consultation

Rather than building extensive new road capacity for buses, we need to make better use of existing road capacity, build travel hubs and re-route bus services, and create safe and convenient cycle and pedestrian routes...

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...

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...

Let’s make taking the bus more attractive

Twenty years ago, I found myself working in my company’s Manchester office for a week. One morning, the regional sales manager and I had an appointment in the city centre. In our suits and carrying briefcases, we...

Let’s make our buses easier to understand

Those who don’t understand public transport don’t use it. Bus operators and local authorities all over the world could help themselves by giving passengers the sort of usability we take for granted on metro...

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.

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...

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...

Response to Cambourne to Cambridge busway proposal

Further to our response to the public consultation, we have prepared seventeen key questions for the City Deal Executive Board to answer in relation to its decision on 13 October 2016 to progress a proposal to build a...

Rebooting the City Deal

Smarter Cambridge Transport held its first public event, Rebooting The City Deal, on Friday 14 October at Wolfson College, attended by around 250 people. Our thanks to Antony Carpen for videoing the event. Here are the...

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...

Greater Cambridge City Deal: A New Approach

Areas of concern [Updated 23 August 2016: expanded section on access and parking permits] Here in summary are ten concerns that residents, businesses and observers have voiced about the City Deal: The City Deal is...

Buses

Updated September 2018 with details about a Cambridge city bus hub moved to a new paper. Background After years of growth, bus patronage is in decline, locally and nationally, at a time when train patronage continues to...

Travel Hubs

A ‘travel hub’ refers to a bus, tram or train station with more facilities than a bus stop, and with the dominant modes of access being walking and cycling.

Response to Milton Rd and Histon Rd consultations 2015/16

Next key date: 20 March 2019. The Executive Board will be considering final outline designs for Milton Road before proceeding to detailed designs and building in 2020–21. The Assembly meets on 27 February to pre...

Can we do better than bus lanes?

The County Council’s view ‘Bus priority’ has come to be used interchangeably with ‘bus lane’ or ‘busway’: the Cambridgeshire Long Term Transport Strategy (November 2014) refers to, “On-line or off-line bus priority...