Romsey Liberal Democrats - find us at http://www.cambridgelibdems.org.uk/romsey

We have moved our website to http://www.cambridgelibdems.org.uk/romsey and will soon be deleting this site. Learn more

The City Deal proposals for road closures – one resident’s views

by Paul Saunders on 12 October, 2016

Our thanks to local Romsey Town resident Piers Vitebsky for allowing us to publish his reply to the recent City Deal consultation on the proposals and the  Peak-time Congestion Control Points (PCCPs) ..

 

Thoughts about traffic in Cambridge
10 October 2016

I travel constantly around the city and the villages on foot, by cycle, by car, and by train.  I currently live in the city, and have previously lived in a distant commuting village.

The leaflet talks several times about the need to get people to use alternatives to cars. Yes, but any scheme will fail if it does not acknowledge that some people, or some journeys, have to use cars and must be allowed to do so.  I support cycling, but starting from a position of punishment or hostility towards motorists will create resentment.  Carrots encourage cooperation, sticks do not.

Cars: It is essential to distinguish between different kinds of traffic.  Even leaving aside commercial needs, there are at least two categories of car user with completely different needs:

a) Commuters from outside the city.

The PCCPs seem largely aimed at them.  But how many of these people can manage not to come by car, and how could it be made possible for them to use buses?  The last weekday bus out to Park and Ride sites leaves around 8 pm. So it is impossible for a commuter to stay on after work to catch up on paperwork, or meet friends, or go to a restaurant or cinema, or even to risk the possibility that they may want to.  Unless they come into the city by car.  The No 17 bus out to Little Wilbraham runs only once a day, and leaves before 6 pm.  The last 16A to other villages leaves at 4.30 pm.  There are many other examples.  So nobody from these villages can work in Cambridge.  Unless they come by car.

If everybody from every village could afford to use a bus or P&R, additional bus lanes, expanded resident parking, and demolition of trees may become unnecessary anyway.

Recommendations regarding commuters:

  1. Park and Ride buses should run throughout the night, or at the very least until after midnight.
  1. There should be adequate provision for cycles to be stored permanently at the P and R, so that people can also drive as far as the P and R and then cycle into the city even without using the buses.
  1. P and R sites will need to grow bigger to accommodate an increased use.
  1. All facilities at P and R sites, including both parking and buses, should be free of charge. This would remove almost all incentives for any of these cars ever to come into the city.
  1. Buses out to the villages should run considerably later, with timetables that take realistic account of how people could use them to commute into Cambridge and return after an evening out in the city.
  1. These facilities would need to be up and running before any restrictions come into place (indeed, restrictions may not be necessary), so that people could see them working. Don’t put all the risk on the traveller.  The traveller is necessarily risk-averse, because s/he has to get to work.

b) City residents.

There are all sorts of reasons why these people need to use their cars for journeys inside the city, and they should not be prevented from moving freely around their own city at all times.  For example, I often carry sick people, arthritic people, babies, foreign guests, heavy luggage, delicate objects, etc.  I live in Romsey and my grandchild lives in Arbury, with prams and baby paraphernalia.  My mother lived in Girton, with wheelchair and Zimmer frame.  Such people cannot visit each other by bike, or even by bus.

Aim to increase flow by throughput rather than by obstruction.  I have come to the conclusion that it is a fundamental mistake to block off side roads.  The frequent jams on the main roads confirm this.  I have studied rice irrigation systems in the tropics, and there is a far better movement of water if it is not all channelled into a few large channels, but also allowed to trickle through little side routes.  Cambridge has very few channels, and they quickly flood.  Drivers need to be able to use alternative routes down side-streets.  I have brought up a family in a Romsey rat run, and the problem with cars was not so much their quantity as their speed.  It is speed bumps rather than barriers which have been effective in solving this problem.

Cycle/pedestrian bridges are good too, but a particular source of congestion is the very limited number of car routes to cross the railway and the river.  The slightest problem on any of these, and the local traffic backs up immediately.

Recommendations:

  1. Open up blocked-off side streets to allow a trickle of traffic through from one main road to another, to ease blockages on main routes. But keep those roads well speed-bumped.
  1. Build more road bridges across the river and the railway. Great care should be taken to site these sensibly in relation to feeder traffic.  For example, how about a new road bridge giving access from Newmarket Road to the new railway station in the north?  This will ease pressure on access to the city’s central station.
  1. The current “ring road” is inside the city and has become part of the problem rather than a solution – again, because there are so few alternative routes. Develop a complete outer ring road which would allow a journey from one side of the city to be other made entirely outside the city rather than through the centre (ie Elizabeth Way or Hills Road).  The A14 is part of a solution, but the circuit needs to be complete all round the south too.  You cannot expect traffic to stay out of the centre without this.
  1. Reclassify the new hospital road so that it becomes a relief road for through traffic, ie one more contribution to the very few through routes anywhere in the city.

Railway station.

The main thing people need to do at the central station is to arrive and depart.  Both are currently difficult.  How can they be made easier?  Many people will always need to do this by car, not least because they have luggage – dropped off, say by someone going on to work or doing a round of calls.  There is currently almost no space for dropping off.  This must be much bigger, and it must be made easy to drop off and move on quickly.  PCCP will be a bonanza for taxis, since much of the city will be cut off from the station (have you made plans for a huge increase in cab licences?).  But not many can afford a taxi to the station every day to go to work.

Taxis must be kept next to the station.  Buildings should not be allowed to encroach on space needed for movement.

Cyclists need reassurance that the station really is becoming easy to use with a bike. After a lifetime of having bikes vandalised or stolen, or not allowed on trains which have no guard’s van as in other countries, I am still reluctant to trust any link between bike and train – as are many people I know.

The North Cambridge station will take over from the central station as many people’s station of choice – but where is the road access, eg from the south of the city?  Also can we be sure that all the same trains will run to London as they would if we started from the central station, or will it be out on a branch line?

***********

Other points:

Make much greater use of school buses.  As with P&R, have recognised trans-shipment points, so that people will only have to reach these and not go individually right up to the school gates.  This would be a great joined-up solution now that so many children can not get into their local schools.  As with P&R, use your money to make these free or nearly free, to give incentives rather than punishment to drivers.

Whatever arrangements you make in terms of barriers, don’t make them permanent and expensive (and don’t plant trees there), as they will probably have to be changed.

Make cycling proficiency training free and widely available, so that it becomes the expected norm for all the city’s cyclists, both children and adults.  Not to do the course would become immoral, like drink-driving.  This could set a standard for the rest of the country to aspire to.  On a national scale, this could lead to motorists being offered an insurance discount if they pass the cycling test.  Let Cambridge set the tone.

Can we know more about the research mentioned in the leaflet: who did it, what were they asked to study, how did they do it?  Can you publish the research so that we can evaluate it?  Also if it was done by a private contractor, why did you not use the research capacity of Cambridge University?

Is the City Deal money available for any well-argued improvement in transport, or is it tied to only certain solutions or kinds of solutions?  If the latter, why?

   Leave a comment

Leave a Reply

You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>