Picking up official reports, strategies, plans, and documents that will need refreshing in the face of new government policies following the general election 2024
“I didn’t know we had a walking and cycling infrastructure plan!”
Well you do now – and you can read it here.
“Do we have to type this now? It’s half-past-midnight on a Friday night!”
Rock’n’roll Neuro-diversity-style. It stems from this question:
It links into the Combined Authority’s Local Transport & Connectivity Plan here
The only way to get it through the party political mess was by creating local sections that amongst other things dealt with concerns about a road user charge. Hence:
- Local Section – East Cambridgeshire
- Local Section – Fenland
- Local Section – Greater Cambridge
- Local Section – Huntingdonshire
- Local Section – Peterborough
This was despite the conclusion from the Conservative-dominated Transport Select Committee of 2022 that ministers needed to get to grips with the issue.
Above – The Transport Select Committee’s conclusion on road pricing, 04 Feb 2022
Making space for people
One of my persistent moans about the projects the Greater Cambridge Partnership supported was their failure to support pavement-widening schemes. In particular ones that involved acquiring land rights next to pavements on trunk roads that could make a big difference – such as on Hills Road.
Furthermore, they carried out assessments on the order in which cycleways/greenways should be improved.
This also links up with work done by the South Cambridgeshire villages on the Cambridge-King’s Cross line, residents using Foxton, Meldreth and Shepreth railway stations carried out an audit not just on the stations but on the routes to/from. It is sobering reading.
Above – Local Rail Improvement Plan 2020
“Hang on a minute – I thought we already had an Active Travel Strategy?!”
We do. The Active Travel Strategy 2023 is here. It was what informed the latest consultation that I moaned about from Cambridgeshire County Council several days ago here. I conceded however that at a neighbourhood level, this one is more important as it allows people to pinpoint things on a digital map. Presumably that links up with the walking maps they produced here. Again, I don’t really know if anyone is familiar with them. I wasn’t until a few minutes ago.
Above – detail from the Cambridge Walking Map
“It does give the impression that the city lacks an integrated transport map”
Having a map is one thing, having a properly-maintained transport infrastructure is quite another. And this was clearly demonstrated in the catastrophic GCP Consultation of 2021 called Making Connections. This was the one where senior transport officers of the GCP tried to plough ahead with ill-thought-through proposals that took both politicians and the electorate for granted at a time of huge distrust and a toxic culture in politics – one that resulted in several councillors quitting local democracy altogether.
Following the 2021 Mayoral and County Council elections, the incoming Mayor Dr Nik Johnson scrapped his predecessor’s futuristic and ultimately unfunded proposals for the rail-less CAM Metro to focus on bus service improvement. That left the city with a proposed transport network of 2030 looking like the below
Above – detail of Cambridge 2030 from the GCP’s Consultation Brochure 2021
The GCP still have not come up with a better explanation of what will happen to their busway buses coming in from Cambourne other than ‘They will join the existing bus network’. I’ve spent the past decade or so trying to get an answer out of them but they have stubbornly refused. Which is one of many reasons why I was on the ballot paper at the city council elections in 2023 calling for the GCP’s abolition.
Cambridge 2030 is clearly not the completed picture
That’s what’s so excruciating about it. Because the GCP was supposed to be this major step-change in transport infrastructure to sort out our city’s chronic transport problems. The people who have benefited the most seem to have been the consultants. I hope ministers direct civil servants to carry out their own assessment of why the GCP has been such a failure on too many things – in particular its big ticket busway projects.
“Which reminds me – what is the GCP up to these days?”
Essentially it was preparing for the next assessment from civil servants and ministers. You can read through the agenda pack of the last meeting on 07 March 2024 here. It’s not clear what happened to the revised proposals (see here) from the GCP following the very clear message the electorate sent the political parties – one that forced the climb-down on road user charging. I got the sense at the time that transport officers were panicking about what to do because they had no contingencies for their busway plans or road user charging plans being politically undeliverable. This was ultimately confirmed by the Combined Authority in the Greater Cambridge section of their Local Transport & Connectivity Plan.
Above – LTCP Greater Cambridge Section p14
“So where does that leave the GCP?”
Waiting for the Gateway Review.
Above – from the GCP here – it will be interesting to see what the new Government makes of the GCP – and what the position of the three new Liberal Democrat MPs will be following the general election campaign where the GCP was a very controversial topic.
“Is there any way out of this mess?”
Abolish the GCP and transfer its funding for non-busway things over to the Combined Authority. Then work out a plan for light rail along the lines of Cambridge Connect, based on existing technology and negotiate with ministers a means of taxing the wealth we are told Cambridge’s economy makes, and use that to pay for that light rail and the additional infrastructure (transport, housing, civic, social, sports, leisure) needed to fill that gap that Dr Andy Williams, formerly of Astra Zeneca, spoke of last year at the Queen Edith’s Community Forum.
Food for thought? (It’s now 1.45am).
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The Cambridge Town Owl 