Spot on. Nothing like a feasibility study or two to oil their favourite consultancies.
Thanks for finding this. In principle a Mass Transit Taskforce is a good idea in the context of the devolution proposals and the £15.6 billion Transport for City Regions funding allocated in the 2025 Spending Review.
I'm very interested in this as a possible example of what could be done in Cambridge, especially as most riders on the Cambridge Mass Transit Bandwagon want a tunnel under the town centre and the river.
Given the ongoing saga of the Transport and Works Act Orders for the Cambourne and Babraham busways, I doubt this is going to be a magic bullet.
www.bbc.co.uk
I read somewhere that this is what happens in France, it does seem a good idea
Even if there is a problem (and in Cambridge there is), there is a lot of thinking that goes:
Er, no they didn't. Rouen's original tram network was closed in 1953. The current tram network first opened in 1994.
Rather unfortunate to be honest because most urban areas in the UK aren't large or densely populated enough to justify a proper heavy rail metro compared to trams. Even the West Midlands and Greater Manchester metropolitan regions put together are only just over half the population of London. At least a metro could be better future-proofed compared to trams though if accounting for potential population growth.
The situation in Cambridge at least is that all the other methods tried to reduce congestion haven't worked great. The Sustainable Travel Zone (or any way of banning cars, that is) never got off the ground and you can't increase bus frequency and usage without reducing the rush hour congestion in the first place. The only long-term scenario that seems likely at the moment is continuous stagnation, putting a limit on how much Cambridge can grow as an 'innovative' modern city. Lots of parallels with other UK cities in this respect.
Indeed, most cities in France that built a tram from scratch were able to fund it with the Versement mobilité - a small tax on businesses to pay for public transport. Add in a workplace parking levy and the council no longer needs to beg the Treasury for scraps. In France, local government can impose its own taxes to a degree, unlike the UK. Based on the current UK political climate I doubt it'd succeed in implementation though.
Aren't the trams used pretty much off the shelf from Europe and interchangeable?
These cities aren't dense enough to justify full underground lines apart from potentially one corridor in each. Cities in Mainland Europe are able to build metros as the way their housing is built is far more clustered. Manchester and Birmingham basically have sprawling suburbs with low density 1-2 miles outside the city centre which is not suitable to deal with a fully fledged metro
Other solutions may have been tried in Cambridge, but Mass Transit isn't the only remaining option.
While developing the rail corridor (through EWR and Cambridge East) would certainly improve things in places immediately near a station within the city, its development would still primarily benefit those in commuter towns/villages. Cambridge North and Cambridge South both have limited catchment - for cross-city travel purposes, North is only well-located for east Chesterton, South is only good for east Trumpington, and Cambridge East will primarily serve new housing which doesn't solve the transport problems with existing residential areas.
If you read the Local Plan - the focus is on development via new settlements, served via the busway. Broadly speaking, Cambridge remains hostile to densification or green belt release, and sees Cambrourne and Waterbeach as strategies for this. While there is some allocated densification, this isn't going to be enough to meet the needs. However I believe that central government will rightly rip up the Greater Cambridge local plan given the Cambridge growth company and similar.
No, mass transit can't solve that, because there is nowhere to put the tracks.
This isn't correct. Waterbeach is getting a new station, Cambourne is getting a new railway. In the meantime, there are plans for busways for both. Northstowe is next to the existing guided busway. The Airport site will get a new station.
When Cambridge South opens it will, for the first time, be possible to cross the city in 15 minutes during the day, just by getting on a train. The catchment for that is big.
Someone else who has read the draft local plan!
THe same constraint applies to any new bus priority measures. Without priority measures, there's no feasible way of massively improving transport along these routes without banning private cars completely (unworkable). What do you propose?
A train or busway station 10-30 mins walk away (ideally a pleasant walk, not always) is not enough to make a development count as 'transit oriented'. If you want to get anywhere other than Cambridge city centre or the town in the other direction on the railway/busway, the car is the only option. It's still good, don't get me wrong. But the majority of residents will still need 1-2 cars.
Look at a route like Trumpington (west side, where most of the homes are) to Arbury.
Not that it really matters, but Rouen is about the 12th largest city in France. Population is often hard to measure, but if you say that makes it akin to a Bristol or a Belfast in the UK, that may be a fairer comparison. And both of them may well justify a tram system based on population.
The nearby cities of Caen and Le Havre have less than half that and still boast 2-3 lines. It's not really about the overall city's population, it's about the population density along a specific busy urban corridor.
