Cambridge Science Park rail station approved

Cambridgeshire County Council has approved the planning application for the new railway station at Chesterton serving the north of the city.

This will involve an extension to the guided busway.

Several details of the scheme are causing concern, including the safety of proposed cycle lanes.

More information here.

Christmas and New Year bus services

Changes to busway timetables for Stagecoach buses during the festive season  are as follows :

Christmas Eve - Services finish early*

Christmas Day & Boxing Day - No service

Friday 27th & Saturday 28th December - Saturday service 

Sunday 29th December - Sunday service

Monday 30th December - Saturday service

New Year’s Eve - Saturday service*

New Year’s Day - No service

Normal service resumes on Thursday 2nd January 2014

*Last buses on Christmas Eve & New Year’s Eve will be:

Route A: 2012 - Trumpington park&ride to Central Cambridge

Route A: 2038 - Central Cambridge to St. Ives Hill Rise

Route B: 1833 - Huntingdon to Central Cambridge

Route B: 1920 - Peterborough to Huntingdon (does not continue to Cambridge)

Route B: 2020 - Peterborough to Huntingdon (does not continue to Cambridge)

More details, including other Stagecoach services in Cambridgeshire can be viewed here.

Whippet's timetable alterations are:

25/26 Dec 1Jan - No service

27 Dec amended Saturday timetable 

28 Dec Saturday timetable

29 Sunday service

30/31 amended Saturday timetable


See Whippet website here. However, there doesn't seem to be any detailed information about what the 'amended' Saturday timetable is for 27, 30 and 31 December.

Busway extension to Science Park Station

The Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg has visited Cambridge to announce spending of £6million for the new Cambridge Science Park railway station at Chesterton, including extension of the guided busway to the station.

Mr Clegg also signed a 'memorandum of understanding' which would allow Cambridge to keep a  bigger share of tax revenues raised locally with over £1 billion to be spent on housing and transport projects. The local authorities have pledged to explore the possibility of an underground bus or rail system for Cambridge

To read full story click here and here.

Delays to busway services

Regular users of the busway will be aware that the buses don't run every 7-8 minutes as they are supposed to. A whole lot of delays occur, usually as a result of road conditions  elsewhere.

There is a good example in this week's Hunts Post (11 December, page 11). It's about parked cars blocking Cowper Road, Huntingdon, a small residential street that, because of Huntingdon's one-way street system forms part of the westbound Busway B route. The photo shows 4 Bs waiting to get through. That's an hour's worth of buses! OK, they're westbound, but that means their return journeys towards Cambridge will subsequently be delayed.

Parking charges at Busway sites?

There's been a lot of noise in the local media about the County Council's plans to charge users of the Cambridge City Park & Ride sites for parking (in addition, of course, to the bus fares they need to pay to ferry them into town and back). What I'd missed until this morning was that the same Council meeting had also, in principle, agreed to back the imposition of charges for parking at the Busway P&R St Ives and Longstanton sites from 2015/16.

Almost inevitably, Stagecoach's Andy Campbell has something to say about this (well, there's a potential loss of revenue = profits for his company) - and, equally inevitably, the Cambridge News has used this as the basis of a story. See here for the CN news item.

The County Council documents, meanwhile, are to be found on the rather dull-sounding "Enterprise, Growth and Community Infrastructure Overview and Scrutiny Committee" web pages - follow this link for the specific agenda item relating to this. The proposal first appears in Appendix A, and is budgeted to raise £120K in 2015/16. (There are other Busway-related entries in these Business Plan papers which might well repay closer attention, if only I knew how to interpret them!)

The Council's Press Release didn't go into details, so I'm allowing myself to forgive me for missing this amongst all of the paperwork. And it's worth noting that the final decision hasn't actually been made - that's up to a meeting of the full Council in February.

Busway extension to Chesterton Station - traffic conflicts

Cycling campaigners and local residents in the vicinity of the new Cambridge Science Park Station have highlighted potential traffic conflicts between the busway extension to the station and lorry traffic to/from the Nuffield Road industrial estate. They are proposing that Nuffield Road traders be given a direct link to Milton Road.

Details at Cambridge News here.

New Cycleways

Cambridgeshire County Council have published details on their website of new cycleways - planned very soon. Two likely to be of interest to readers of this blog are:

The A1096 St Ives: Foot and cycleway will run along the St Ives A1096 bypass from the Meadow Lane junction to St Ives Business park. This will connect to the busway via existing cycleway along Meadow Lane and the Park & Ride site. Construction is expected to start this month, and be completed by end of February!

In Swavesey, the Swavesey to Buckingway Business Park Cycleway will run from the south end of the village to Buckingway Business park, and extend over the existing A14 flyover to the roundabout at Cambridge Services. Construction is expected to start in February and be completed June 2014.

Both will have 2.5m wide track (where possible), separated from the road by a 1m grass verge.

Further afield, Other cycleways also planned are Wandlebury to Babrham Research Park and A505 to Granta Park.

The last 3 here are "being funded by Cambridgeshire County Council's successful bid this summer to the Department for Transport for £4.1m from the Cycle City Ambition Fund."