Smarter Cambridge TransportUpdated regularly.
Our mission
The Smarter Cambridge Transport team is developing and promoting a modern vision for integrated and sustainable transport for Cambridge, south Cambridgeshire and beyond to:
- Give people more travel options.
- Make journey times predictable.
- Enable buses to run faster.
- Make multi-modal* journeys easier.
- Make paying for transport and parking simpler.
- Make cycling and walking safer and more enjoyable.
- Design transport infrastructure for people not vehicles.
- Protect and enhance the natural and built environment.
- Promote social cohesion and inclusion.
Our plan
Our ten point plan for realising the aims listed above is:
- Implement Smart Traffic Management in the city.
- Use proven technology to regulate traffic flow within the city responsively to demand.
- Implement Inbound Flow Control so that congestion is experienced (if at all) only at the edges of the city, resulting in predictable journey times for all road users (electronic signs will indicate expected queuing times), and faster journeys by bus. There will be no need for bus lanes within the city.
- More about Smart Traffic Management
- Build travel hubs throughout the region.
- Three Park & Ride sites will serve people arriving by car on the M11, A14 and A428.
- Every village and rural business park will be within comfortable cycling or walking distance of a travel hub.
- All travel hubs will provide shelter, secure cycle parking, car parking, and live transport information.
- Larger sites will also provide a waiting room, toilets and lockers. Some may also have a coffee shop or a small convenience store, also serving as a parcel/shopping collection point.
- More about travel hubs
- Reorganise bus services.
- Reorganise city, rural, park-and-ride, works and school bus services into express and local services.
- Express services will run frequently along radial routes to/from Cambridge, calling only at travel hubs and other major stops en route.
- Feeder bus services and community transport will connect with express services at travel hubs to provide inward and onward connections to homes, schools, businesses and amenities in the surrounding area.
- The city or county council will employ a schools transport co-ordinator, paid for by subscription from private schools.
- More about bus services
- Simplify ticketing.
- Implement smart ticketing for all public transport, car parking and cycle hire within the region to facilitate multi-modal* journeys.
- Create a journey planner.
- Create a website and app for people to plan multi-modal* journeys, see real-time travel updates, purchase tickets and reserve car parking spaces.
- Create a connected network of segregated cycle ways.
- On busy roads, within the city and between villages, protected cycle lanes and junctions will be the norm, providing safe separation of pedestrians, cycles and motor vehicles.
- Make strategic modifications to the road network.
- Restrict through access around the inner ring road to promote freer movement of buses around the city centre. Restrict right-turns where there is a less-disruptive alternative access point for local traffic. Create more home zones without through traffic (‘rat runs’). Add missing connectivity at major junctions (such as the Girton interchange, A14–A11 and M11–A11) and build new link roads where necessary to facilitate efficient movement of traffic along major routes, and reduce the volume of traffic through residential areas and villages.
- Enhance access to rail services.
- Build new train stations:
- Cambridge South, serving Addenbrooke’s Hospital and the new Biomedical Campus;
- Fulbourn, also serving Cherry Hinton and Teversham;
- Harston, also serving Hauxton, Haslingfield and Newton;
- Soham, also serving Fordham; and
- Waterbeach North, serving the Waterbeach Barracks development.
- Create an eastern entrance to Cambridge Central and North stations.
- Increase line capacities to run frequent local services.
- More about rail
- Build new train stations:
- Promote city-wide goods delivery services.
- Promote integrated delivery services to and from local shops and businesses via depots/collection points at park-and-ride sites.
- Specify operating conditions, including low environmental impact, for couriers to be granted privileged access into the city and through road closure points.
- Rationalise car parking in the city.
- Phase out free parking for commuters on residential roads.
- Repurpose multi-storey car park space for cycle parking, cycle rental hubs and residents’ parking.
- Remove on-street parking where it is especially hazardous to cyclists.
- Charge employers a workplace parking levy to encourage employees to use alternatives to driving.
- More about on-street parking
This is just the beginning of the journey: each of these points will be developed in detail over the coming months, in consultation with local councillors, residents, businesses and special interest groups. We will consider seriously any ideas you may have, and our proposals will evolve in response to feedback.
*Multi-modal: involving more than one mode of transport to complete the journey, e.g. catching one bus after another, or cycling to catch a bus, or taking a train then renting a bicycle. Most trips into London are multi-modal; indeed all trips are multi-modal if you include walking!