Transport professionals and their supporters have used the acronym HQPT for years. They should be banned from doing so!
…on the grounds that it irrationally fills me with rage!!! (And I quite like the artwork from where I got the image for this blogpost!)
One of the many things that come with being neurodiverse / having ADHD etc is random triggers can send my rage levels up from zero-to-ninety in a flash.
This is the offending piece in the Greater Cambridge Planning Documents
Above – Greater Cambridge Local PlanTransport Evidence Report (Part 4)
Draft Plan Update (Oct 2025) p41
“Why can’t county council transport people just say: “Bus”?”
Inertia probably – that’s the acronym they chose – the earliest record online I can find dates back to 2007 and defines what HQPT is.
Above – South Cambridgeshire District Council LDF Development Control Policies – adopted July 2007, p150.
Basically it defines the service provision for the guided busway.
“The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, currently under construction, is intended to provide a High Quality Public Transport system (HQPT) (services of a minimum 10 minute frequency during peak periods and minimum 20 minutes frequency inter-peak)”
South Cambridgeshire District Council 11 Nov 2008 Memo from Chief Executive
The reason why I object to the use of HQPT is that it clearly does not describe the mode of transport to the public. And that matters. (Also, are any of the current services meeting that HQPT standard?) Figures in the world of business and commerce – in particular the Cambridgeshire Chambers of, have told me repeatedly that *wealthy people will not use a bus. They will however use a tram or light rail*.
For me it also speaks volumes that no one has been able to inspire a critical mass of people to get behind the proposals on big public transport infrastructure in/around Cambridge over the past quarter of a century, which tells me that the problem is institutional and structural.
“Someone invented the acronym just for Cambridge, didn’t they?”
This is sort of where I tap into Zoe-Bread-Style superpowers that annoy transport types who are like: “We were instructed to get busways built and built they shall be!” Even though the instruction was given a quarter of a century ago and most people who were around at the time forgot about it or never knew about it in the first place.
Above – Zoe Bread, top t-shirt-maker and anonymous vlogger who made Manchester City Council look very foolish indeed
If I didn’t have CFS/ME and was a few decades younger, I’d like to think that part of me would be doing similar with the decision-makers deciding what the future of our city is going to be. And I’d collect all of the badges too!
Above – Being a talented (or chronic-take your pick) over-thinker who can hyperfocus on a random sidequest at the best of times… Anyway, normal is boring! Badges by Jubly-Umph
I got the late diagnosis one recently – even though it’s still gonna be ages before an assessment result. (You can’t really be diagnosed for something that is not an illness in my book. It’s more a ”disposition’)
Was HQPT invented for Cambridge just to annoy me?
Probably not, but using a couple of search engines when you throw in the acronym plus ‘Transport’ into it, the vast majority of hits that come back are Cambridge-themed. The only other transport-themed reference I can find is from an EU-funded study between 2006-10
Above – Proceed HQPT 2006-10 – have a read
It felt like it was getting to the stage where transport officers and senior local politicians were not being honest with the public about the use of buses over alternatives like trams and light rail.
Looking back at earlier proposals, plans, and concepts
Let’s look at this presentation from Cambridgeshire County Council to the Federation of Cambridge Residents Associations from 2013, and in particular the slide on p25
Above – CambsCC to FECRA July 2013, p29
Out of all of the options built since then, only those managed by central government have been completed or are under construction. I.e. the A14 upgrade and the A428 improvements near St Neots. The Foxton upgrade? Mr Davidge put that in his regional plan for Cambridge in 1934. We’re still waiting.
Railways and busways
If you’re wondering why busways are so prominent, it’s because the godfather of busways, Bob Menzies, was the transport chief of Cambridgeshire County Council who, for better or worse, drove through the construction of the current Cambridgeshire Guided Busway. After five years of it opening, Mr Menzies wrote this piece for TransportXtra which is worth a read. (BRT = Bus Rapid Transit).
Throughout the planning and construction, he was strongly opposed by campaigners who wanted the old Cambridge-St Ives railway line reinstated. You can browse through their archive website here, as well as having a look at the alternative rail solution from https://www.castiron.org.uk/.
The Conservative-led county council proceeded with the Bus Rapid Transit model rather than the rail-based one. Ironically the current Conservative Mayor has made it his policy to have light rail and trams rather than busways for Cambridge. His legal representative will be giving evidence in the closing part of the public inquiry on 20 November 2025
It’s interesting to see the proposed new rail corridors and the as yet unbuilt stations at Cherry Hinton and Fulbourn in the 2013 options
Above – CambsCC to FECRA July 2013, p19
Note also how there’s no Cambridge South station (opening next year due to a delay) on this diagram. In the meantime the people of Wisbech, Haverhill and others are still waiting.
Above – CambsCC to FECRA July 2013, p22
Much as I’d like to claim that East West Rail’s inclusion was down to me and Puffles chasing down the Energy Secretary – then the Leader of the Opposition Ed Miliband about Oxford-Cambridge Rail a few months earlier, it wasn’t, as this leaflet from October 2013 shows.
Above – EWR Oct 2013 uploaded 2015 – by which time the county council were showing an interest.
On Monday the Combined Authority’s Transport Committee meets. Have a look at the papers and see what you can find about light rail.
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