On the 8th of December 2016 the Greater Cambridge City Deal Milton Road Local Liaison Forum, comprising the area’s local councillors, and three residents’ association representatives, voted in favour of a plan which involves removing the existing bus lanes from Milton Road.
Managing Director of Stagecoach Andy Campbell was not impressed and suggested councillors were delusional. He asked to comment from the public seating and was invited to do so. He said:
“My understanding of the City Deal (and I think one councillor did in fact mention it, I’m glad I didn’t waste all those evenings going to those meetings) … that the idea for this is to reduce congestion and encourage people onto public transport, walking and cycling. So far you’ve taken out the bus priority which exists and you haven’t replaced it with anything that improves it, you’ve made it worse. You now want the bus operators to put more buses in to the park and ride sites and the busway and you now want to send the people who are using them a more convoluted way into the city, if you think that’s going to encourage people to use public transport then you are delusional”.
An anonymous apparent associate of Mr Campbell later interjected to add:
Trees do not reduce congestion
Voting Detail
Those in favour of progressing the no bus lanes on Milton Road plan were: County Councillors Onasanya and Scutt, City Councillors Abbott, Bird, Sargeant, Tunnacliffe and Milton Parish Councillor Bradnam. They were supported by the Milton Road Residents’ Association, Hurst Park Avenue Residents’ Association and Old Chesterton Residents’ Association reps.
King’s Hedges’ councillors Smart, Gawthrope, and Price abstained.
There were no votes against.
The Do Optimum Proposal
The full details of the “do optimum” proposal which councillors supported were tabled three minutes before the meeting began. One of my local councillors, Kevin Price, told me that was the first he’d seen of them too.
Neither the proposal tabled at the meeting, nor the proposed resolutions were available to the public in advance of the meeting.
My View
There is no harm in modelling the traffic on the road without the bus lanes to see how it would be predicted to perform. I would like to see the results of such analysis.
I suspect though that some bus lanes will be needed on the approaches to junctions.
4 responses to “Councillors Vote Against Bus Lanes on Milton Road – Stagecoach Unhappy”
As the key meeting papers have not been published I’ve photographed them and made them available.
The Do-Optimum plan:
http://rtaylor.co.uk/pdf/do-optimum.pdf
The resolutions considered at the meeting:
http://rtaylor.co.uk/pdf/resolutions.pdf
Hopefully proper copies will be available soon (the application I used to photo/”scan” those into a PDF doesn’t appear very good).
I’ve also tweeted key images:
I’ve published a full video of the meeting; here’s a direct link to Andy Campbell’s comments in context:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-77uj–YfI&t=112m04s
As I think I’ve commented on your blog before, bus lanes are only useful if they allow buses to by-pass queues of traffic. Without congestion there would be no need for bus lanes. Where bus lanes remain part of our plans we’re accepting that Cambridge will always be severely congested during rush hour, and we’re concluding that special infrastructure is needed to allow buses to avoid that congestion.
I agree, and that appears to be the rationale behind the plan – though no presentation of the proposal explaining it was given to the meeting despite councillors only receiving the plans on the night.