Close scrutiny of the maps – these should be printed out on A1 and displayed in libraries and on the bus stops outside the main railway stations so people can look at them while waiting
I have previously written about Cambridge’s unbuilt eastern entrance before:
It was at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus that one of the local residents brought in copies of the East West Rail detailed route sections and land use proposals during construction blown up to A1
The detailed route section plans for East West Rail
- You can browse through them here
- The key is here
- The detailed Cambridge Station and Cambridge South Station section is here
Above – p1 of the Cambridge Station section
The label ‘Proposed Platform 9’ at the foot of the diagram is placed over part of Coleridge Rec, with the top of the map facing westwards.
Above – from GMaps here, – you can sort of see how the diagram vs the photo align
Zoom in further and you can see The Junction Arts Centre at the top-left, which is where I think the GCP should have funded a footbridge from the centre to the station. They may not need to build a new bridge if a new eastern entrance is created – just a safe footpath from the venue to the station.
Above – an urban design challenge: how do you make a footpath from the back of The Junction to the railway station both safe and convenient?
Above – from G-Maps here. You’ve got to get from right to left passing in front of both the car park as facing from this perspective, and in front of the Royal Mail sorting office and car park to get to the staff car park which is also where a pedestrian eastern entrance could be.
“You mean there’s no eastern entrance proposed?”
Not yet – it was something that former South Cambs MP-candidate for The Green Party Miranda Fyfe spotted in one of the first public consultation events for this series.
The Beehive Centre – a missed opportunity?
Not yet – but this is an opportunity to build a new station for the Beehive Centre’s redevelopment – something I suggested in summer 2023 here.
The image looks southwards at the top, and northwards at the bottom. As I set out in the 2023 blogpost here, A rail station over the Coldham’s Lane Bridge could (in principle) provide for four exits. These are:
- North Romsey (residential area – top left of the photo)
- The Beehive Centre (sci-tech park proposals, around 5,000 employees anticipated plus any local residents and visitors using their facilities – top right of the photo)
- The Coral Park Trading Estate and Cambridge Retail Park – depending also on what the land owners might do if such a station were built – as this could substantially increase the land value – bottom right of the photo)
- The Centre for Computing History – which is one of Cambridge’s hidden gems, (bottom left of the photo)
The opportunity is below:
Above – p2 covering Coldham’s Lane Bridge
It would be up to The Government and The Combined Authority as things currently stand to decide whether the station would be a suburban stop, a light rail/tram stop, or both. Either way, it has the potential to open up commuting access to the site from much greater distances. Can RailPen the pension fund behind it be persuaded to contribute? (Email your councillors or local MP to see what they say!)
A stop for the Project Newton / Cherry Hinton Innovation Sci-tech park?
This one featured in https://cherryhintoninnovation.co.uk/ that recently got planning permission in fairly controversial circumstances back in Sept 2024 which I wrote about here. I opposed it on transport grounds.
With quite sizable units proposed in this photo from the consultation at St Andrew’s Church in Cherry Hinton, I said to the developers I wanted to see a suburban or light rail stop to serve their development
Above – p3 covering Coldham’s Lane East where the label that reads 807+000 points towards is where a new railway station or stop could be built
Note Rail Future East has proposed such stops along the line similar to Cambridge Connect.
This is also conveniently close to the Second Urban Centre I’ve proposed for an expanding Cambridge on the airport site. And if we’re going to have a such a new urban centre, it will need a grand station for it.
Above – as I mentioned in this tweet, I’d want the entrance to the railway station to look something like this in Budapest, Hungary. i.e. not Network Rail’s ‘minimum viable cost’ design
And for Capital Park, Fulbourn?
…where another sci-tech development is happening (I went to that consultation in May 2023 which you can read about here), if they are potentially getting all of the land enclosed within the red lines as being within the Development Consent Order application, may as well take the opportunity to do as much work as possible for new stations. Back in 2022 I said that the firms should be contributing to the costs.
Above – p2 covering Fulbourn Tescos and Fulbourn Hospital
This is also where there has been a significant expansion of sci-tech developments which have had woefully poor transport infrastructure built to serve them. My lungs tell me that when I breathe in their traffic fumes.
Above – from G-Maps here. ARM, Peterhouse Tech Park are at the bottom left. Capital Park is top centre-right, Fulbourn Tescos is top-centre, and the new housing development on the old Ida Darwin Hospital Site is near the top-right corner
One urban design challenge is how to connect the Peterhouse site with Fulbourn Railway Station in a manner that seamlessly avoids the roads. Another longer term question is whether the Tesco Fulbourn site can be used far more productively given that at present it’s just a huge car park (that does not generate revenue but does generate traffic fumes!) and a single storey warehouse. And if so, how do you do it in a manner that does not lead to net job-losses for those dependent on both employment and the much more affordable goods sold in the supermarket?
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The Cambridge Town Owl 