Expansion to St Ives Park & Ride

St Ives Park & Ride is expected to double in size for 500 to 1000 cars using  part of the £20 million the government has allocated for improvements to the A14 (Hunts Post, 18 January, page 3).

But was the guided busway the right option in the first place? A letter ( page 7) from Tim Phillips, chairman of CAST.IRON, the group that campaigned for reopening the St Ives railway, refutes the arguments made by Roger Cox in the Hunts Post of 11 January. In particular, he questions whether the busway can ever pay back its capital costs. He demonstrates how  the  reopened railway could easily have improved on the poor journey times between Huntingdon and Addenbrooke's the busway offers. He wonders why the busway was extended to Addenbrooke's when there were already 16 buses an hour between Cambridge rail station and the hospital.

Another letter on the same page by William Gibson of Huntingdon says that the busway usage of over a million people show that it is a success and that the railway would have been vulnerable to 10% fare increases, leaves on the line, the wrong kind of snow plus eye-watering car parking charges.