Smarter Cambridge Transport

Tag - buses

Smarter Cambridge Transport is retiring

Members of the team will continue to support and advise other groups in their campaigns to get the right transport solutions. The website will remain up.

Response to Cambridge South East Transport consultation 2020

The Greater Cambridge Partnership is expected on 1 July 2021 to give the go-ahead for this scheme to proceed to its final stage before granting permission for its construction. The most recent information is available...

Response to the CPIER Interim Report

The Smarter Cambridge Transport response to the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Independent Economic Review's interim report.

A service level agreement for bus travel

Less variability in journey times is not actually what most people who use buses complain about. Missing a connection because of delay is a big headache. It’s why people don’t like having to change buses.

Negotiating the elephant on the A1307

5,000 new jobs are coming to the Biomedical Campus by the middle of next year, with no extra transport provision for them.

This is not an infrastructure project!

One Ticket, One Network, One Brand here will do more to achieve modal shift than rolling out some red tarmac for a few buses a day.

Start with the quick wins

Let's see action on interventions that can make a difference now, while the Combined Authority gets the longer term strategy right.

Lessons for Cambridge from Singapore

London does integrated transport pretty well. Arguably Singapore does it better. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough's mayor can learn from both.

Frequency: the key to better public transport

Imagine a gate at the end of your driveway that opens only once every 30 minutes. You cannot apply a private motorist's mentality to shaping public transport policy.

Response to ‘Cambourne to Cambridge’ consultation

Rather than building extensive new road capacity for buses, we need to make better use of existing road capacity, build travel hubs and re-route bus services, and create safe and convenient cycle and pedestrian routes...

A hard-headed look at buses

You probably know you can get a guided bus from Cambridge to Huntingdon? It takes 1hr 7mins. You can save yourself 14 minutes by catching the Whippet X3, which runs via Cambourne and Papworth – yes, via Cambourne. Take...

Cambourne needs a bus station

The Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) is deeply mired in complexity and controversy over building a busway from Cambourne, an orbital link to Addenbrooke’s, and a new Park & Ride west of Cambridge. It has spent...

Reorganising buses is all the rage

Groningen, Oldenburg, Ghent, Hasselt, Bogotá and Algiers did it years ago. Houston and Seattle did it recently. Dublin is doing it now. Cambridge isn’t. But it should be. Houston, Texas radically simplified its bus...

Let’s make taking the bus more attractive

Twenty years ago, I found myself working in my company’s Manchester office for a week. One morning, the regional sales manager and I had an appointment in the city centre. In our suits and carrying briefcases, we...

Let’s change the way public transport works here

The Dutch are well-known for their high-quality cycleways. They also do a very good job of running public transport. First, they have OV-chipkaart, a national smart card that lets you tap-and-go on just about any train...

Concrete is not the only solution

Aren’t you just loving the 2017 election season? In the local elections, we had weeks of talk about headline-grabbing transport infrastructure projects. Most candidates stated an ambition to solve the region’s transport...

Saving the Green Belt with sustainable transport

Green belt land has two purposes: preserving countryside for future generations, and preventing urban sprawl. Unfortunately our green belt protection policies are failing to prevent sprawl, and endangering the...

A lesson from Plymouth

In the excellent Urban Transport Without The Hot Air by Steve Melia, there’s a study that has important implications for Cambridge and Cambourne. Ivybridge is a small town in Devon, just under 10 miles from Plymouth...

Let’s make our buses easier to understand

Those who don’t understand public transport don’t use it. Bus operators and local authorities all over the world could help themselves by giving passengers the sort of usability we take for granted on metro...

Bus franchising: a golden opportunity

The Bus Services Bill allows the mayor here in Cambridgeshire to adopt London-style franchising of bus services. This is a golden opportunity for innovation.

Response to City Deal 8 Point Plan

This is the Smarter Cambridge Transport response to the City Deal on the 8 Point Plan to reduce congestion in Cambridge: Better public transport and Park & Rides We fully endorse this ambition, but with some...

Buses

Updated September 2018 with details about a Cambridge city bus hub moved to a new paper. Background After years of growth, bus patronage is in decline, locally and nationally, at a time when train patronage continues to...