Combined Authority Mayor Paul Bristow says next step for light rail is a feasibility study

Posted byCambridge Town OwlPosted inUncategorized

…something that I’ve been waiting nearly a decade for – along with everyone else who has been supporting the Cambridge Connect Light Rail proposals

Image – Puffles the Dragon Fairy in Haverhill back in April 2014, linking up the town’s rail-reopening campaign with the emerging work on what became the GCP

Credit to Daniel Fulton for tabling this public question to the Mayor at the Combined Authority Board Meeting on 04 June 2025, which read as:

“Four out of the five candidates standing for election as combined authority mayor favoured some form of light rail system to meet the transport needs of Greater Cambridge.

“Despite this, the Greater Cambridge Partnership insists on pushing ahead with expensive public inquiries for its busway schemes which deliver very poor benefit cost ratios, which will fail to provide sufficient capacity for transport to key destinations, and which lack broad public and political support. Two successive governments have favoured accelerating growth in Greater Cambridge, and yet the Greater Cambridge Partnership insists on sinking further public funds into its unambitious and outdated schemes.

“What steps will the combined authority mayor take to convince our local councils and the GCP to withdraw their support for the planned busways and to commit the GCP’s remaining resources to developing the light right system that Cambridge deserves?”

Above – CPCA Board Meeting 04 June 2025, item 2

“What did the Mayor say in response?”

Have a listen to the video here – it’s the first public question that begins shortly after the start of the meeting. Annoyingly it’s not on YTube which makes things a little bit more fiddly but I guess we’ll get used to it. A shame because the firm that provides the new service, Public-i, is one I quite like because the Hove-based firm is on the bus route I used to take to go to university when I lived on the south coast. Also, they were one of the first firms to pioneer live-streaming as a firm long before anyone else was doing it.

“I was delighted a level of consensus began to be formed on light rail [during the election campaign]”

“I’m delighted with my conversations with this board and with Cambridgeshire[sic] City Council…this is something we can and should deliver together”

“In contrast, there is no such consensus on busways…The GCP began as an opportunity, but it hasn’t been the transport solution that Cambridge has needed…The GCP’s moment has passed, and its time is up. I am confident that the Government has listened to this view…and seemed open to this view…and will rapidly reach the same conclusion. We can turn the page on division.”

“I have had encouraging conversations with Cambridge City Council, the CPCA Board, with the Cambridge Growth Company, and with the Government about the prospects of light rail and how it might work. I’m convinced a solution can come forward.”

“I’m hoping very soon to announce the next steps, and that is likely to be around a feasibility study for light rail”

Above – quotations from CPCA Mayor Paul Bristow at the CPCA Board Meeting of 04 June 2025

Which is splendid news because here’s me 2 years ago making the case for Cambridge Connect Light Rail proposals at the Cambridge City Council elections when I was an independent candidate in Queen Edith’s ward.

Above – me in favour of light rail, 03 May 2023

I also made a video on Light Rail and Urban Transit Magazine – watch it here!

You can also subscribe to the magazine here. Also, see Cambridge Connect Light Rail who got us to here.

This is the result of nearly a decade of campaigning

The first video I filmed of Dr Colin Harris, the founder and driving force behind light rail for Cambridge was from this presentation back in April 2016. Pre-EURef! Over nine years later and here we are today!

Back in March 2017, I tabled a public question calling on the Greater Cambridge Partnership (or ‘City Deal Assembly’ as it was known back then) to ‘reappraise the Cambridge-Haverhill options’ to cover both:

  • a heavy rail extension through to Sudbury and Colchester (thus opening up options for Cambridge-Chelmsford services to connect Anglia Ruskin University’s two campuses), and
  • a light rail option as per Cambridge Connect’s proposals for its Cambourne-Cambridge-Haverhill proposal

Have a watch of the video here, and scroll forward to 2mins in to where I get to the specifics. Then have a listen to the former senior county council executive Graham Hughes (long since retired) give his presentation and responses, and judge accordingly.

Note also a couple of years earlier back in January 2015 I questioned the GCP/City Deal about a Cambridge-Haverhill link – have a watch of the video here.

Then in 2018 the Queen Edith’s Community Forum held a panel debate on the future of transport for South Cambridge – at which Dr Colin Harris shared a platform with Cllr Lewis Herbert (Coleridge – Labour), Edward Leigh of the Smarter Cambridge Transport campaign, amongst others.

So this has been *a very long time in coming* – and if/when it finally gets built, someone should give Dr Colin Harris a medal because it wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without him coming up with the concept.

The CPCA Transport Committee – 25 June 2025

The meeting papers are normally published a week in advance so should be up from around the 17th June on this page. If you want a public question read out on your behalf, see the details here.

If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to: