Cambridge City Deal Options Fail to Provide Strategic Vision for Cambridge Transport

The potential inclusion of the “world’s first ‘park and cycle’ site” was revealed this week as a further option in the City Deal’s transport plan. City Deal chairman Cllr Lewis Herbert is reported in the Cambridge News as saying “We all know how congested the centre of Cambridge can get, so if we are to continue to grow we must find ways to make it easier to move around the city. The idea of the ‘western orbital’ bus service, on the M11 or a segregated bus and cycleway next to the motorway, could provide an alternative way to work for residents throughout South Cambridgeshire.”

South Cambridgeshire District Council’s own estimate for the amount of traffic expected to be generated by the Bourn Airfield development is 29,750 trips per day. A significant proportion of that will be travelling into Cambridge – where the jobs are.

Despite acknowledging how bad traffic in Cambridge is already, the idea that this might be eased by commuters cycling alongside the M11 into Cambridge as an alternative to driving in, such that thousands of additional journeys could be accommodated, seems fantastical to say the least. Cllr Des O’Brien said “The City Deal is being pitched as the proverbial white knight on his charger wading in to slay the dragon of traffic chaos in Cambridge. My own view is that that’s very far from the truth… The City Deal should have been part of a grand vision, but instead it has been hijacked to help support a limping, strategically flawed local plan. Two of the largest schemes – the Cambourne to Cambridge busway, and now the western orbital along the M11 – are priorities for no other reason than the fact that South Cambs are hell-bent on building in the region of 6,000 houses in new settlements on the A428.”
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For the full Cambridge News story see here – http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/World-8217-s-8216-park-cycle-8217-multi-million/story-28702166-detail/story.html#1