Cambridge market project must fix streets, says Cambridgeshire Sustainable Travel Alliance

A survey of visitors to Cambridge’s market square reveals that most would like improvements made to roads and pavements.

Many pointed to potholes and broken paving, and some said the pavements were currently unsafe.

The survey run by Cambridgeshire Sustainable Travel Alliance suggests that while people feel Cambridge’s city centre streets are a fairly pleasant place to spend time, around half would like to see improvements for pedestrians and ‘wheelers’ – mobility scooter riders and wheelchair users.

A Cambridge City Council consultation on how it could spend money in and around the market square as part of its civic quarter project closed on Sunday, 28 July.

Sarah Hughes, campaign officer at Cambridgeshire Sustainable Travel Alliance, said: “Even if successful, the civic quarter project will only improve conditions for people on a very small number of city centre streets.

“We therefore call on the county council and Greater Cambridge Partnership to step in and complete the wider overhaul of streets that is required to create a city centre that is safe, pleasant and easily accessible for all.”

The travel alliance asked more than 125 people – including both locals and tourists – how pleasant they found the central streets and how easy it had been to access them. Amid the plans to spend £20million creating a central area that “lives up to the city’s world-renowned reputation as a centre of excellence and cultural significance”, the alliance wanted to know how people rated the streets and what the key improvements were they wanted to see.

Survey participants rated the pleasantness of spending time in Cambridge’s city centre streets on average 7.8 out of 10, which the the alliance says shows that there is clear room for improvement. Common complaints were potholes, broken paving, litter and street cleaning.

Many people wanted pavements to be wider to create more space for walking; others wanted better demarcation of pavements and space for motor vehicles or cycles. It found most people had arrived by public transport, on foot or by cycle.

David Stoughton, chair of Cambridge Living Streets, said: “A majority of respondents express disappointment with the state of the footways, as our own surveys reveal.

“References to narrow and crowded pavements, clashes with other modes of transport and broken or uneven surfaces that require the walker to watch their feet rather than their surroundings, abound.”