Cambridge - Haverhill?

[edwin_m]

Mill road is narrow and very busy.

I agree this is a non-starter. Hills Road is a bit wider but has a lot of traffic. Also a lot of the employment is around the Science Park so continuing to Cambridge North could be better as well as easier than trying to get into the centre.

 

[ac6000cw]

I suspect (with some use of common land in places, and a new bridge over the river) you could squeeze at least a single track light rail line alongside the heavy rail line between Cambridge and North stations. Then diverge west along a dual-use busway/tram alignment to serve the Science Park and Regional College areas and maybe onto Northstowe (if the economics stack up).

Using the back streets and some property demolition, you could come up with routes to get trams through the city centre avoiding the main thoroughfares, but the planning and political hurdles to getting anything like that to happen would take forever - it's a city full of highly opinionated and vocal residents (and a university that owns a considerable amount of the land and property in it).

 

[mr_jrt]

Back when I used to commute to Cambridge I used to muse on a "Ж" - shaped metro rail system using at the very least a 4-tracked core from Shepreth branch junction to Coldham Lane junction, but ideally from Shepreth junction to St Ives junction, with the local services running on the eastern pair and the "mainline" services on the western pair, and services like Hitchin to Huntingdon, Stansted to March and Sudbury to Bury St Edmunds, (obviously all via Cambridge!)

...or something like that.

 

[Tobbes]

Back when I used to commute to Cambridge I used to muse on a "Ж" - shaped metro rail system using at the very least a 4-tracked core from Shepreth branch junction to Coldham Lane junction, but ideally from Shepreth junction to St Ives junction, with the local services running on the eastern pair and the "mainline" services on the western pair, and services like Hitchin to Huntingdon, Stansted to March and Sudbury to Bury St Edmunds, (obviously all via Cambridge!)

...or something like that.

Now this I like....!