New busway plans progress despite call for railway

Heather Williams said she would rather see a railway line open between Haverhill and Cambridge

Concern has been shared that the money spent on plans to build a new busway for Cambridge would have been better spent on reopening the railway line to Haverhill.

Heather Williams, Conservative opposition group leader at South Cambridgeshire District Council, said she believed reopening the train route to the Suffolk town would make a “big difference” and help “relieve pressure on the growth of the city”.

However, others have said they still want to move forward with building the new busway as part of the Cambridge South-East Transport Scheme (CSET).

The CSET project was paused by the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) last year after increases in construction costs meant it did not have enough money to fund all of its projects.

The proposed route would run between the Fourwentways Services on the A11 to the Cambridge Biomedical Campus

However, earlier this year the government announced it would give £7.2m to start making progress on the busway project again.

The scheme proposes building a new dedicated, mainly off-road busway as well as a segregated walking and cycling route, from a new travel hub off the A11 to the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, where Addenbrooke's and Royal Papworth hospitals are sited.

The GCP is planning to ask Cambridgeshire County Council, as the highways authority, to submit a Transport and Works Act Order (TWAO) to ask for permission to build the new busway.

The partnership is also proposing to separately start early work to build improved cycling and walking infrastructure along Francis Crick Avenue, on the hospitals site.

This would also include new bus stops to support the planned opening of Cambridge South railway station in 2025.

'Relieve pressure'

Ms Williams told a GCP joint assembly meeting the CSET project was "difficult and challenging", as infrastructure was needed, but she could not support it moving to the next stage, said the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

“The reopening of the railway really would make a big difference to transport and also to relieve pressure on the growth of the city," she said.

“We have seen expansion at Haverhill, but if we don’t start looking at these things where development can happen further afield than just Cambridge, I really worry we are just going to be engulfed into a massive housing arena."

Peter Blake, interim director of the GCP, said as part of the business case process for CSET the GCP has assessed reopening the Haverhill train line, which closed after the Beeching report cuts in the 1960s.

He said: "The cost was put at somewhere between £600m and £700m to reopen the rail line.

“Clearly you will be aware there has also been a number of national reopening of rail station projects since and [Haverhill] has not gone at any traction with the rail industry in terms of that rail line."

The GCP’s executive board is due to meet later this month and will be asked to agree that work can start along Francis Crick Avenue, and to request the county council to submit a TWAO for the busway.