Early work to begin on proposed busway

The new busway would link facilities like Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge to the A11

Plans to begin early work to prepare for a busway and path for walkers and cyclists have been agreed.

The Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP), a transport delivery body, wants to build the route between an A11 transport hub near Babraham, Cambridgeshire, to the city's biomedical campus, where Addenbrooke's and Royal Papworth hospitals are based.

The GCP's executive board voted on Wednesday to ask Cambridgeshire County Council to submit an application to the government to build the busway.

It will also start improvements along Francis Crick Avenue, which the busway would run alongside, eventually linking to a new train station called Cambridge South.

The proposed route would run between a travel hub off the A11 and the Cambridge biomedical campus

The new busway is part of the Cambridge South East Transport (CSET) scheme, which the GCP paused last year after increases in construction costs meant it did not have enough money to fund all of its projects.

Earlier this year, the government announced it would give £7.2m to resume progress for the scheme.

Andy Williams, business representative at the GCP, said it had taken 10 years to get the project to this point and that in that time, the science campuses in south Cambridge had continued to grow.

He said buses were only currently used by a "relatively small part of the population" and were unreliable.

GCP chairperson Elisa Meschini dismissed calls to invest in a railway link to Haverhill instead

Concerns have been raised that the money planned for the CSET busway should be spent reopening a train line between Cambridge and Haverhill in Suffolk instead.

Elisa Meschini, deputy leader of the county council and chairperson of the GCP board, said it would cost "in the region" of £800m to reopen, since much of the land from the old railway line had already been built on.

She said: "It is not possible to do that; there is nothing to kill – it was never alive, I'm afraid."

Cambridgeshire County Council, as the highways authority, will now consider the GCP's request for it to submit a Transport and Works Act Order, which is needed to get permission for the new busway.