Only on the Cambridge Busway
The news today just adds to the shambles of the Cambridge Busway.
How can you trust an organisation that can’t spell only?
Cambridge Busway – The Real Winners
It is starting to be obvious, who are going to be the real winners from the Cambridge Busway – The lawyers! This article in the Cambridge Evening News opens with the following.
A major court battle is looming over the cost of Cambridgeshire’s guided bus project after contractors claimed it could cost millions more to build than originally budgeted.
Cambridgeshire County Council and the builders have been at loggerheads over the guided bus contract for years.
When they say major battle, that will probably be true as the busway was budgeted to cost £118.2 million and the contractors say it will cost upwards of £30 million more.
The lawyers are going to love this one.
I’m also glad I don’t live in Cambridgeshire, as I suspect the council taxpayers of that county will be footing the bill in the end.
Can this be one of the reasons why the busway was built? If it had been heavy rail, then the excess costs would have fallen on Network Rail, which would actually mean the government. Here Cambridgeshire get that toxic parcel!
And there is still no opening date for the busway.
Dangers of the Busway
This was the heading on a letter in the Cambridge Evening News.
The last two paragraphs are repeated here.
The track was being well used by walkers, joggers, cyclists, fishermen, bird-watchers and horse-riders.
Many of them, including children and a couple of cows which had escaped from the neighbouring field, were on the bus lane. As it seems to be de rigueur to be plugged into an iPod and oblivious to external sounds, I wonder how long it will be before we have an accident on it?
I hope the writer is wrong.
Oxford
I went to Oxford today to play real tennis for Cambridge University Real Tennis Club against the old enemy.
I’m afraid that the captions aren’t up to the usual standards, as I don’t know Oxford very well.
I did win the tennis though!
Someone is Using the Cambridge Busway
Busway stories seem to be like buses; you wait ages for one and then another comes straight after it.
So here’s one about free runners using the busway.
Cambridge Busway Builders Take a Break
It’s late and now it’s going to be two weeks later as now the builders of the Cambridge Busway are taking a two week break over Christmas!
The Hats are Still There
I went into Cambridge this afternoon and the hats I mentioned earlier are still there.
So I took some pictures of Kings College Chapel and Senate House.
Note that the hats are quite small, so enlarge the pictures to see them on the four spires.
Students will be Students
When I was at Liverpool University, I had a friend on my course called Alvin John Slasser, who was known as Shaun. He was an experienced climber and climbed everything in site, including the giant crane that was being used to build the Catholic Cathedral.
So when I heard on the news this morning that students had put Santa hats on Kings College chapel I was amused. It was just students following the tradition of Shaun and others. It would appear though that the college authorities are not amused.
The article in the Telegraph also notes this student prank.
In 1958 a group of Cambridge engineering students hoisted an Austin Seven onto the roof of the Senate House at night and left it balancing there.
A few years after this happened, I remember them showing how they did this on the legendary Tonight program with Cliff Michelmore. On the previous night they’d hoisted beams to make a crane and then the car with its back axle removed was lifted, followed by the axle.
I sometimes wonder what happened to the students who did that stunt.
I got a lot of that wrong, when I originally wrote it. The full tale is here.
Sadly, Shaun, my friend at Liverpool University died when abseiling down a rock face in Snowdonia.
Life can be cruel.
The Busway Slips to the New Year?
There is a video on this article, where it would appear that the long delayed busway will start services in the New Year.
They should have used some of my software to get it right.
Sustrans and the Cambridge Busway
When the Department of Transport report into the Cambridge Busway was published it contained these paragraphs in the section of the busway’s supporters.
Sustrans supports the guided bus project. Moreover, with its associated maintenance track it offers great potential benefits for cyclists and walkers. The route is expected to form part of the National Cycle Network and this is welcomed.
The maintenance track surface should be tarmac or equivalent throughout. There is a danger that were the surface to deteriorate, people would be tempted to walk or even cycle on the guideway. Access to the stops should focus on the public walking and cycling there. This necessitates a network of high-quality feeder paths to be constructed at the same time as the busway. More thought needs to be given to crossing details for cyclists, walkers and horse riders.
It would be desirable for the buses to employ hybrid drives to allow electric operation within the City area. Also, the buses should have the capability to carry cycles.
I suspect that they would be very interesting in the picture I put up in Paddling the Guided Busway. To get round the puddle, I actually crossed the busway twice, which echoes Sustrans’ comments about the deteriorating surface.
They also wanted hybrid buses and the capability to carry cycles. I don’t think either of these points have been met.
Interestingly, search the Sustrans web site and you will find no mention of the Cambridge Busway at all. So perhaps, the only reason they supported the busway was because of the promise of a cycle track, which is now more suitable for cyclo-cross.
I can’t find their comments on it now and would welcome them. The nearest I can get to a direct quote is this piece from Railway Ramblers.
This is Sustrans’ response in the latest edition of The Hub, its quarterly magazine for supporters: ‘While Sustrans fully supports plans to improve public transport, we do question whether bus routes should be built at the expense of walking and cycling paths. It seems counter intuitive to develop public transport in direct competition with walking and cycling when the aim is to tackle road congestion and greenhouse gas emissions [and rising levels of obesity – Webmaster]. What this trend seems to show is how under-valued walking and cycling are as transport choices in their own right.’ Many share this view. Many also question the wisdom of building guided busways in the first place. Not only are they visually intrusive structures that deploy vast amounts of concrete, but the example now being completed between Cambridge and St. Ives has cost millions of pounds more than reinstating the railway which it replaced.
I’d agree with all that.
We need good cycling paths everywhere and perhaps a better and much cheaper solution would have been to use the old railway to create a proper cycle path all the way from St. Ives to Cambridge. In fact I’ve seen comments on the Internet, that the route will be used by cyclists from Histon to get to the Cambridge Science Park.
But the latter did not need a scheme that is going to cost upwards of a hundred million pounds.
The Anonymous Widower 