Phew that was hot, I took the chance to find a cool place and catch up on some recent transport updates and there is plenty to keep across. I read, that Mill Road Campaigners were jubilant that the County Council has reported a recent consultation favours its closure. This is without a business case being conducted for the impact it will have on local businesses, no modelling of the impact this will have on surrounding roads when the congestion and poor air is simply moved somewhere else, nor the impact it will have on people getting to the city centre to visit or work.
I attended a Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) briefing on Friday and this was very informative, once again the narrative is largely around active travel and walking, creating more cycleways and whilst this is great, their progress on new Park & Rides on the edge of the city has been very slow with no new ones delivered since they started their work in 2013.
Last week I hosted about 100 businesses at our summer business event and Andrew Carter, CEO of Centre for Cities, was the keynote speaker, an urban economist, his views were very insightful about the future for cities, how they are the engine rooms of economic growth and how we need the well-paid jobs to support layers of other employment in the economy. The challenge Cambridge has is that the well-paid people can afford to live in the city and cycle and walk. The staff who are serving them in a bar, café, restaurant, hotel or shop cannot, they cannot work from home, they have to drive in since the public transport provision does not meet their needs, their free parking options will soon be reduced if more resident schemes are adopted, they could be priced out of working here.
I was reassured by the GCP that new buses would be available for quite some time, to encourage people out of their cars before a proposed congestion charge would be introduced.
Tomorrow I am attending a Combined Authority Transport briefing, they also plan for more buses and active travel, why can’t these bodies connect and co-create one solution after all Cambridge is quite a small place.
