[Members] CambridgePPF City Deal statement 15 Dec 2016 (forward)

[Tania Elliott]

Dear FeCRA Members

 

We are forwarding this statement from CambridgePPF because it might be of
interest to you. See below:-

Tania Elliott

Secretary FeCRA

Please reply to:  <mailto:secretary at fecra.org.uk> secretary at fecra.org.uk

Federation of Cambridge Residents' Associations

 <http://www.fecra.org.uk> www.fecra.org.uk 

 

Dear All

 

In the past couple of weeks a number of people have been asking us what
CambridgePPF's position is regarding the City Deal's proposed
Cambourne-Cambridge busway. In response we have issued a statement setting
this out and how we believe the City Deal can improve its performance. This
is copied below, attached as a PDF and also available on our website at
<http://www.tinyurl.com/CPPFcitydeal> www.tinyurl.com/CPPFcitydeal (though
note we are having problems with our website at present). Please feel free
to share this statement.

 

Statement on the City Deal from Cambridge Past, Present & Future

 

The City Deal has come in for considerable public criticism over its plans
to improve public transport in the Greater Cambridge area.  Is this
warranted?  How can the City Deal improve its performance and enhance its
public reputation?

 

This statement sets out CambridgePPF's position on the City Deal.  Although
we support its overall aims and objectives, we have serious reservations
about the approach it has adopted.  We suggest a number of practical steps
to improve its performance, with specific reference to the growing
controversy over the Cambourne to Cambridge bus route.

1.      CambridgePPF believes that the City Deal provides the opportunity to
address the infrastructure deficit that risks jeopardising the further
prosperity of the City and South Cambridgeshire.  The infrastructure
investment provided by the City Deal has the potential to alleviate problems
of housing costs and availability, employment provision, traffic congestion,
and skills development, all essential components for sustainable long-term
economic growth.

2.      CambridgePPF endorses the decision of the City Deal to focus its
investment primarily on public transport. With house prices driving lower
paid, and even mid-range, workers to live a distance from the city, the
resulting commuting congestion risks the recruitment of businesses and
skills and thus our continued economic prosperity.

3.      The City and South Cambridgeshire Local Plans up to 2031 are
predicated on a spatial planning strategy of keeping Cambridge as a compact
dynamic city surrounded by its tightly bound Green Belt, and locating
essential housing outside the Green Belt in South Cambridgeshire.
CambridgePPF agreed a Statement of Common Ground with both Councils in 2014
endorsing this strategy but with the proviso that its viability depended on
the creation of adequate public transport links connecting the new housing
with the emerging centres of employment around the city fringe. The City
Deal is the mechanism to provide these transport links.

4.      If the transport links were deemed to be insufficient by the
Planning Inspector at the on-going Examination of the Local Plans, then the
Plans would be rejected. The consequences could, in CambridgePPF's opinion,
be highly detrimental in that a number of speculative major developments for
urban extensions around the city fringe in the Green Belt would come
forward.  Although these would most likely be rejected by the Councils,
there is a strong possibility that at least some would gain approval from a
planning inspector.  We would then end up with unplanned and uncoordinated
development around the city fringes in the Green Belt. 

However our support of the principle for the City Deal is tempered by
serious reservations about its approach.  To improve its performance,
CambridgePPF calls on the City Deal:

1.    To widen its thinking beyond its obsession with buses and bus-lanes.
We agree that the priority must be given to pedestrians, cyclists and public
transport, but other modes of public transport must be part of its remit. If
any city in the UK can come forward with exciting and innovative ways of
addressing the universal problem of urban congestion, it ought to be
Cambridge, but the City Deal seems to be stuck with a focus on engineering
solutions for new bus-lanes. Non-polluting shuttle buses, driverless buses,
light rail, even the use of tunnels beneath the city, should all be part of
its thinking. The City air quality already on occasion breaches both
European and UK legal pollution limits, so increasing the numbers of large
polluting buses in the city centre will simply make a bad situation worse.

2.    To address the problem of city-wide congestion before focusing on
specific arterial roads. The City Deal needs to adopt a more holistic
approach to tackle traffic management across the whole city and to break
away from its current piecemeal project-by-project approach to deliver a
more strategic joined-up vision.  Driving bus-lanes cross-country or down
urban arterial roads should be the option of last resort once other means of
reducing congestion have been tried.

3.    To ensure that its decision-making gives equal consideration to the
social and environmental implications of a project as to the economic
factors.  In CambridgePPF's opinion, decisions are being made in a rush with
insufficient consideration given to the broader sustainable development
issues early in the design stages. Options that would cause unacceptable
social or environmental harm are being allowed to progress as serious
alternatives.  A multi-disciplinary planning team that includes city
planners, urban designers, and landscape architects could help counter the
emphasis on road engineering and ensure that better balanced proposals were
presented for public consideration.

4.    To take a more long-term and less rushed approach to its
decision-making.  CambridgePPF appreciates the urgency for spending the
first tranche of money if the second tranche is to be released, but this
need does not justify the approval of projects that could cause long-term
harm to the fabric of the city and its setting.  A more measured approach,
with the early input of affiliated disciplines, leading to a more
constructive public debate is required.  

Applying these principles to the proposed Cambourne to Cambridge bus route,
CambridgePPF stresses the following points:

1.   The scale of new housing proposed along the A428 corridor out to St
Neots and the A1 (some 10,000 new homes by 2031) necessitates a major
improvement to the public transport and traffic flows approaching Cambridge
from the west. However, congestion across the whole city should be addressed
before the piecemeal tackling of specific bottlenecks like Madingley Hill.
If congestion could be cut by 20% (the target proposed by the City Deal
itself through its City Access and Peak-Time Congestion package) is such a
heavy engineering solution as the proposed Cambourne-Cambridge cross-country
bus road actually needed?

2.   A 2014 report by Mott MacDonald showed that some 20% of traffic
descending Madingley Hill on the A1303 in the morning rush-hour is actually
wanting to turn south onto the M11 at J13. The re-design of the Girton
Interchange (J14) into an all-ways junction would relieve the A1303 of this
traffic.  This should be an elementary improvement.

3.   Before agreeing to any cross-county bus roads, the City Deal Executive
Board must satisfy itself that on-road options have been thoroughly
examined.  CambridgePPF is concerned that the premature rejection of the
on-road option for the A1303 by the County Council could influence the
impartiality towards its belated inclusion as a realistic option.

4.   This lack of impartiality has already made itself manifest with the
rejection of J13 as a possible crossing point of the M11 on the grounds that
the bridge did not have the capacity to accommodate dual bus-lanes as well
as the existing traffic with an adequate pedestrian and cycle path, only for
this position to be rapidly reversed with the emergence of a 2015
consultants' report that the bridge with some modification did indeed have
sufficient capacity.

5.   If the City Deal insists on a pursuing a new bus route, then
CambridgePPF supports the option for on-road bus route with a Park & Ride at
Scotland Farm (Hardwick) and believes that the appraisal for this option
should be pursued positively ("what is needed to achieve it").

6.   Driving a new cross-country bus route across the side of Madingley Hill
and the West Field is manifestly unacceptable on social and environmental
grounds. This option would never have been allowed to progress as a serious
consideration if adequate multi-disciplinary analysis had been undertaken
before any public consultation.

7.   Similarly, any decision to site a Park & Ride car-park that will be
floodlit at night on top of Madingley Hill, one of the most prominent
landscape features in South Cambridgeshire and adjacent to a woodland of
SSSI status, would be tantamount to environmental vandalism on the part of
the City Deal.

8.   Any decision by the City Deal Executive Board must first go through the
planning application process before any work can begin. Planning
applications must be assessed in accordance with the Government's National
Planning Policy Framework, which stresses that development projects must
conform to the principles of sustainable development.  This means giving
equal weighting in the decision making to social and environmental factors
as to economic matters. This requirement should be front-of-mind for the
City Deal Executive Board when considering its preferred option.

 

Kind regards

James Littlewood   -   Chief Executive 
 <mailto:ceo at cambridgeppf.org> ceo at cambridgeppf.org 
Tel/ direct link to my mobile - 01223-243830  x 203     
Cambridge Past, Present & Future - Wandlebury Ring, Gog Magog Hills,
Babraham, Cambridge  CB22  3AE    

 

Become a member and support us  -   <http://www.cambridgeppf.org>
www.cambridgeppf.org 

Cambridge Past, Present & Future (CambridgePPF)  - 
a charity working to keep Cambridge and its surroundings special by
positively influencing planning developments, delivering environmental
education and managing the Green spaces and historic buildings in its care -
for the benefit for all. 

 

Cambridge Past, Present & Future (formerly Cambridge Preservation Society)
Registered Charity No. 204121.  Non-profit making company limited by
guarantee, registered in England No. 239835. Registered Office: Wandlebury
Ring, Gog Magog Hills, Babraham, Cambridge CB22 3AE. 

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