Cambridge Connect: The case for light rail

Opinion | By Andrew Duff, advisory board member, Cambridge Connect

We know because they keep telling us. The Labour government will implant more jobs, labs and houses in and around Cambridge. Such ambition requires the development of a mass rapid transit system enabling many more people – including students and tourists – to travel into, about and through the city smoothly, quickly and often. Who is going to build this metro?

The previous government set up an unaccountable body, the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP), and gave it public money to spend on transport. It also created an elected mayor with cross-cutting powers over transport and more money to spend. Evidently frustrated by the lack of progress made by either of these authorities, Whitehall has now created a new delivery vehicle for Cambridge. This is the Cambridge Growth Company. Its chair, Peter Freeman, has three missions: to build affordable homes, increase water supply and sort out the traffic. The last of these seems the most difficult.

To date, the region has shown a chaotic inability to develop a coherent, long-term transport strategy. Over the years there have been piles of consultants’ reports, think-tank studies, wacky ideas and over-excited seminars run by bodies with names like Cambridge Ahead and Innovate Cambridge. Mr Freeman attends these gigs.

Bus v tram

Meanwhile, a small company, Cambridge Connect, has been set up to develop proposals for a light rail metro system. We believe light rail is the best proven, sustainable mode of travel for the region: clean, fast, safe, efficient and spacious. Once up and running, a metro is always popular, encouraging folk out of their cars on to public transport. Of course, buses (and cycles and scooters) feed a metro system, but they cannot be a substitute for it. That is why we oppose the two busway schemes currently promoted by the Greater Cambridge Partnership, both of which will send buses the wrong way to the wrong place.

The GCP’s route from Cambourne to the city (C2C), which controversially ploughs through the Coton orchard, misses out the Girton Interchange – potentially the single most important junction in the region, linking the major highways in all directions close to Cambridge. C2C offers no onward link to Cambridge Regional College, the Science Park and Cambridge North. And C2C would maroon its bus passengers in Grange Road, offering no practical way onwards to the city centre, the central station or the Biomedical Campus. The GCP’s proposal for a southerly busway (CSET), carving through green belt, is equally flawed on environmental and logistical grounds, not least because it does not go to Haverhill where large numbers of Addenbrooke’s workers live.

Cambridge Connect

Cambridge Connect, on the other hand, proposes to build a light rail link from Cambourne along the existing A428 corridor. Trams would then whizz via Girton through Eddington and the West Campus, and dip into a tunnel at Grange Road surfacing at Mill Road (with underground stations at Peas Hill and Parker’s Piece). Without a tunnel under the River Cam, no mass rapid transit is viable. We are advised that finance will be available to dig the tunnel as part of an integrated light rail network.

To the south, Cambridge Connect would get to Haverhill by adopting the former railway line, serving the community better than CSET by passing through villages. Our light rail goes via Granta Park, centrally placed between the Genome Campus and Babraham, enabling shuttle links to the mass transit route.

Cambridge Connect’s light rail scheme is designed in flexible phases, in accordance with both finance and practical constraints. If the political will is there, and GCP money is sensibly redirected, our Phase One can include Cambourne as well as the route to the south. Work on light rail to Cambourne and Granta Park would be progressed in parallel, including the city centre tunnel. As a starter, a short link between Addenbrooke’s/Trumpington and Cambridge central station could be delivered within three years by converting the existing south busway to light rail (the consents for transport corridor are already in place). Later phases would extend the metro out to Bar Hill, Northstowe, Waterbeach, Burwell and then farther afield, attracted by increasing land values.

East West Rail

Cambridge Connect strongly supports the restoration of the strategic Oxford to Cambridge railway. Our light rail will furnish passengers to EWR’s heavy rail stations, accommodating their ‘last mile’ trips. We suggest, however, that EWR can save itself a lot of money and strife by dropping the Cambourne loop. It makes more sense for EWR to take a shorter direct route between Tempsford and the King’s Cross line, south of Wimpole. Citizens of Cambourne will be much better served by frequent trams as part of the city network than by occasional, clunky heavy rail services.

Crunch time

A decision on Cambridge mass transit is urgent. The GCP’s busways will still take 3-5 years to deliver. Light rail will take 4-5 years to deliver. In the interim, improved bus services, including bus lanes on main roads, will have to do. This is not ideal, but it is better than lumbering on in an unaccountable way with two ultimately flawed and inflexible busways. The political decision by government to change tack must be taken in the next few weeks before any more public money is wasted on botched schemes.

If the upcoming mayoral and county council elections are to be meaningful, they must contribute to a democratic settlement of the region’s acute transport problems. We hope that cross-party agreement might emerge from these elections to adopt the long-term spatial strategy that Cambridge lacks. A decision to back a modern light rail network will put Cambridge on a par with its European competitors. It will also give a logical shape to the impending reconfiguration of local and regional government – doubtless including the abolition of the Greater Cambridge Partnership.

Goodbye GCP; hello Cambridge Growth Company. But repainting the livery on the side of buses queuing up to add to the congestion and pollution of the city centre will merely add to the scandal. Urban gridlock damages schools, shops, colleges and hospitals. It impedes social mobility, dissuades investors and weakens the economy. For all political parties it is inexcusable. It seems Cambridge, town and gown, has been making excuses for too long.

For more on Cambridge Connect, visit cambridge-connect.uk/.

Andrew Duff is a member of the advisory board of Cambridge Connect. He is a former Member of the European Parliament for the East of England (1999-2014) and a Cambridge city councillor (1982-1990).