Guided busway bus stop was 'darker than hell'

The husband of a woman killed while crossing the busway track at the Fen Drayton stop in November last year  has described the location as 'darker than hell'.

There is no lighting at the bus stop, possibly to minimise disruption to bird life at the adjacent nature reserve.

The question of lighting at the stop will be considered at a review hearing on 9 December. A full inquest is expected in early 2017.

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/guided-busway-was-darker-than-hell-when-cambridgeshire-pensioner-was-hit-by-bus-inquest-hears/story-29558569-detail/story.html

Lighting the Busway - progress, or, Festina lente

Readers with good memories may recall three postings last year concerning proposals to light the southern section of the Busway. Approval was eventually given by the County Council's Economy and Environment Committee on 21 October. Now, there's an item on the Cambridge News website reporting that work on the lighting is "set to be completed before autumn". Whilst in theory "before autumn" could even mean "tomorrow", reading the story rather than the headline shows that it's more reasonable to expect completion in, say, "late summer" - the tender's only recently gone out, contractors aren't expected on site until June, and switch isn't anticipated until September, according to the Council. Still, progress is progress.

Lighting the Busway - again

Back in the summer, I reported on proposals to light the Busway's southern section. There's more!

At its meeting on 8 July, the County Council's Economy and Environment Committee deferred any final decision until its 16 September meeting. Then at that meeting discussion was again deferred, this time until the 21 October (it was felt it fitted well with other issues due to be discussed at the October).

So, here it is on the agenda for the committee's 21 October meeting. The associated paperwork contains some interesting stuff - for example, statistics of cyclists and pedestrians using what it describes as the "maintenance track" alongside the Busway. It's proposed that funding comes from developer contributions in the Cambridge Area Transport Corridor Funds.

The report presented to next week's committee explains that the original  - seriously flawed - "preliminary costing" was 

"was carried out at a very early stage before full investigation into the possible lighting solutions for the Busway had been carried out".

[Edited 28 Oct to correct a dreadful typo!]

Lighting the Busway - a follow up

Just a month ago, I posted an entry about proposals to light the southern section of the Busway. I said then that the plans were very much on track. What a difference a month makes!

Yesterday's meeting of the County Council's Economy and Environment Committee considered the proposal. Actually, the proposal covered both the northern and southern city sections. I can't easily summarise the details, but will instead provide a link to the relevant agenda item, and the council officer's report. The key issue, though, is that instead of the £100,000 provisionally set aside in December 2012 for the southern section, detailed costings have come in at £400,000 [sic]. Council officers made clear, though, that there was enough unspent money from the pot of "developer contributions" (the levy that larger developments have to contribute to general infrastructure - NB, that's only my personal definition!) to meet the additional cost.

We'll know exactly what happened at the meeting when the official minutes are posted on the County Council website. But there's no reason to doubt the veracity of the Cambridge News report. Here's a taste:

Cllr Amanda Taylor, who represents Queen Edith’s, said it would improve safety and encourage more people to use the track, but councillors from outside the city expressed misgivings about allocating this much money when streetlamps in their areas were being removed or dimmed.

This prompted Petersfield’s Cllr Ashley Walsh to attack what he described as “petty-minded parochialism”, but Roman Bank and Peckover’s Cllr Alan Lay recalled blackouts during the Second World War and questioned why there was now “a lot of fuss saying we must have lights”.

 Something to keep in mind next time you're cycling in the dark along the southern section.

Lighting the Busway (southern section)

According to a post on County Councillor Amanda Taylor's blog, plans are very much on track (wordplay intended) for lighting to be installed on the Busway, between the railway station and Trumpington, in time for next winter. For more information see Cllr Taylor's blog post.

(PS: I am not related to Cllr Taylor - it's a very common surname!)

Busway lighting improvements - for cyclists?

There are a number of items in the County Council's recently-published Transport Delivery Plan 2014/15-2015/16 that relate to the Guided Busway. One that caught my attention is on page 15 and the works involved concern "Provision of lighting". But this is in a section headed "Funding from developer contributions to deliver cycling infrastructure". So, putting two and two together, one might conclude that the County Council is planning to spend around £190,000 over the next two years to provide (or improve?) lighting for cyclists using the bridleway alongside the bus track. But this could be a completely mistaken interpretation of the evidence.

Following the trail a little further, I ended up at the page on the County Council website providing the Forward plan of key decisions and service committee agenda plans (which we might summarise as "Looking ahead", perhaps). The plan for the Economy and Environment Committee, which can be found linked from that page, tells us that its 8 July meeting is scheduled to cover "Guided Busway lighting", which I'm guessing is the same as the item in the Transport Delivery Plan. We should know more when the agenda for that meeting is published a fortnight or so in advance.

Another item pencilled in for the 8 July meeting is "Busway to City Centre Cycle Route". Anyone care to suggest what this might be about (I feel I've done enough guesswork for one day!)?

Science Park station - Busway lighting

The County Council has given details of the street lighting it's proposing for the Busway extension into the forthcoming Science Park railway station. Follow this link for more information.

Solar lighting for busway cycle track

Some time ago it was announced that solar lights would be installed on the busway cycle track, to help guide cyclists using the route at night. Similar lights were earlier successfully trialled on other local  cycle tracks.

Focus on Bar Hill has revealed that work on installing the lights is now beginning between Orchard Park and St Ives,between Longstanton Park & Ride and Longstanton, between Oakington and Girton. This may explain the  works going on between Orchard Park and Histon yesterday evening as I returned from Cambridge on a late evening bus.

It will be interesting to see how they cope when they reach the flooded section of  track near Swavesey, and how the lights perform when submerged for weeks on end!

Also in Huntingdon & St Ives News & Crier ( February 28, page 17).

Lights for cyclists

A proposal has been made to provide solar lighting for cyclists and walkers on the southern section of the guided busway between Cambrdige Station and Trumpington. See Cambridge News website.