Cambridge Ahead’s Transport Group needs to be more public-facing

Posted byCambridge Town OwlPosted inUncategorized

In a social media update, Cambridge Ahead published a summary of a meeting they had with officers from the Combined Authority.

You can read their update here

“Key discussion points included:
🔷 The importance of a long-term transport vision, including both arterial routes and orbital connectivity.

🔷 The potential of travel hubs and multi-modal transport solutions.

🔷 Opportunities in micromobility, including freight considerations.”

Above – summary from Cambridge Ahead on Li

“Who are Cambridge Ahead again?”

 A lobby group representing large employers and institutions in Cambridge.

“We are made up of major employers across business and academia in the Cambridge city region, representing a collective local workforce of over 40,000.”

Above – Cambridge Ahead / About

“Who is on their Transport Group?”

You can view the firms and individuals here.

They have their advocates and their critics. This blogpost isn’t about them as such – more it’s about transparency and balance in local policy making.

I’ve written about Cambridge Ahead in the past.

Now that the Combined Authority will be publishing it’s growth plan in a couple of days time, it’s all the more important that those key discussion points are shared with the public. In particular the location of any new transport hubs.

The future of Cambridge needs policy-making structures, models, and processes that enable the public to play a more prominent part

For decades the UK public policy-making model has felt like a closed shop between ‘key stakeholders’ representing different interests. You could almost summarise it as the Confederation of British Industry representing big business, and the Trades Union Congress representing the workers, and between the two of them they thrashed things out while the rest of us got on with things. Or so it seemed having recently browsed through the 1971 edition of Anthony Sampson’s (New) Anatomy of Britain (His take on the universities, further education colleges, and the print press is striking. There’s room for someone to write a 2024 update.

At a local level, there are a number of local groups that try to represent a not-for-profit ‘civic society’ voice.

These include but are not limited to:

The one group that for me has been conspicuous by its absence in the future plans for Cambridge is the trade union movement.

You can see the list of affiliated local trade union groups in Cambridge Trades Council here. Without digging into the internal politics of trade unions, organised activism, splits within the Left, and the Labour Party locally, I’m surprised that Unite the Union’s bus drivers are not more prominently represented in local transport infrastructure debates given that industrial relations in and around our city are so poor that the bus drivers have balloted for strike action in the run up to Christmas. Given the reorientation of the super-union away from internal Labour Party politics and towards the day-to-day issues of members in the workplace, I can’t help but think that Unite could be looking to get one of its expert transport officers to lobby for a place on one of the various committees given Cambridge’s chronic transport problems.

Paying members of the public to participate on committees

So long as it’s not me who has to be on committees because i’m useless on them! What would it be like if the Combined Authority had its own passengers and pedestrians forum as a counterbalance to Cambridge Ahead’s Transport Committee which is made up of the paid representatives of large employers? (Unless I’m mistaken, the participants are either paid as part of their duties to their employer or are of sufficient independent wealth that remuneration would not make much difference – but am happy to be corrected). What impact would it have if a range of people who were regular public transport users and/or active travellers (walking/cycling/scooting) who were drawn from the cohort of people earning less than the median wage were regular and routine participants? (And were paid for doing so).

Public transport systems designed by men for men

This is a topic that has had little publicity over the decades but has been brought into prominency by the pandemic.

“COVID-19 has created a need to rapidly review and re-plan public transport networks in order to differently serve the most dominant journeys. As such, this project has sought to answer the core question, ‘How can urban transport networks be rapidly reviewed, redesigned and rolled out for a more gender-equitable system?’”

GovUK 29 December 2021

Mindful that around a third of Cambridge Ahead’s Transport Committee are women, and two-thirds are men. What are the inevitable biases that come from a committee representing large/affluent institutions vs say a committee representing people who are more likely to be dependent on public transport? As someone who is dependent on public transport (as well as chronic ill-health), if an event is somewhere where where accessible public transport does not go – such as South Cambridgeshire Hall in Cambourne, Huntingdon for Combined Authority Meetings, or Alconbury for County Council meetings.

Big picture conversations we’re yet to have
  • Public transport and active travel networks that are greater than the sum of their parts
  • The rise of micro-e-vehicles (i.e. quadricycles) and their use as neighbourhood pool cars
  • Regulating privately-owned e-scooters
  • Last mile freight exchanges for small packets (esp for online shopping)
  • Retrofitting our villages, towns, and cities for the climate emergency

These are all things that could form part of a wider series of face-to-face events. Furthermore I think we should move away from the structures of ‘key stakeholders’ and those that can afford lobbyists being the ones that get to meet the decision-makers most frequently. Rather I think there is a stronger case for those interests to be put to wider scrutiny and take questions from the public about their policies and proposals. Especially when it’s the public who are directly affected by them. One example of how this could have nipped a problem in the bud was with the work place parking levy.

“Scotland recently passed legislation to allow cities, starting with Edinburgh and Glasgow, to introduce a WPL. Oxford (with the support of Oxford University), Leicester and three London boroughs are proposing to introduce a WPL.

Yet, Cambridge seems to have ruled it out, faced with strong opposition from Cambridge Ahead. The business group’s membership includes both city universities, Arm, AstraZeneca, and other major employers, land owners and developers. In the 2015 City Deal Call for Evidence, Cambridge Ahead and the University of Cambridge both advocated consideration of a WPL. What has changed their minds?“

Above – Smarter Cambridge Transport 12 December 2019

This was one of the reasons why the Greater Cambridge Partnership decided to blunder ahead with their ill-advised congestion charge proposal – one which when the general public found out about, made an election issue after which politicians dropped it. Had there been a much stronger public presence beyond that of sustainable transport campaign groups, what might the outcome have been? In the end, the non-voting interests supporting the congestion charge were pushed back – not least because they could not find many party political champions to support their policies.

So…who is in charge of ‘Cambridge’?

That’s the big unanswered governance question that successive secretaries of state have ducked – leaving us with a quagmire of disconnected institutions with overlapping responsibilities.

Because of how ministers structured the local elections in the previous decade, we ended up with a Liberal Democrat-led county council (majority), a Conservative CPCA Mayor, and in Cambridge a city led by Labour with a Labour MP. (And if you live in Abbey, Newnham, or Romsey divisions you have Green Party county councillors – and for the former two mainly Green Party city councillors as well!) Which helps make the case for some sort of consolidation and simplification.

One thing the Cambridge Growth Company doesn’t have to worry about is governance. But I think it should be a consideration. It’s something that councillors might question him on later this week. (Sadly I was the only one looking when the option to table a public question was open).

Anyway, events coming up on the future of our city:

Oh – and on 16 December Cambridgeshire County Council has a full council meeting with recently-published papers.

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: