Greater Cambridge Partnership to press ahead with £162m CSET busway plan
Permission could soon be sought to build the controversial Cambridge South East Transport (CSET) busway.
Progress on the scheme was ‘paused’ last September by the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) amid spiralling construction costs. Now, the GCP’s executive board will be asked to move forward with the £162m scheme which it says will provide “fast and frequent bus journeys” to Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
The steps to formally progress phase two of the CSET scheme will be presented at the GCP’s joint assembly next Thursday (12 September).
A report to the meeting explains: “The A1307 Haverhill to Cambridge corridor is one of the key radial routes into Cambridge and Haverhill is a key origin area for travel to work in Cambridge. Information from Cambridge University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust reports around a quarter of their staff live in Haverhill and the surrounding area, making this corridor particularly key in supporting health service provision.
“The A1307 suffers considerably from congestion during peak times, particularly at the Cambridge end, at the junction with the A11 and around Linton, the largest other settlement on the corridor.”
In March, the then Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced in the Spring Budget that £7.2m would be allocated to the scheme to support the proposed expansion of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and tens of thousands of new homes earmarked for the region.
The GCP will use the funding to bring forward a segregated walking and cycling link alongside new bus stops and other safety improvements on Francis Crick Avenue to support Cambridge South Station, which opens next year.
It has already delivered bus priority measures and safety improvements along the A1307 as part of phase one of the CSET project.
The CSET busway will run from the A11 via Sawston, Stapleford and Shelford to the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, with a new active travel route alongside it for walkers, cyclists and horse riders, similar to the one along existing guided busways. It would also take people from Cambridge out to Granta Park and Babraham Research Campus.
But campaigners, including local parish councils, continue to argue there is a far more cost effective and less destructive alternative to CSET.
The charity Cambridge Past, Present and Future has led the calls for an on-road bus scheme along the A1307 corridor instead, which it argues would offer “similar transport benefits” and cost about £100m less.
The GCP, however, says it has looked at on-road options and they would not deliver the same benefits. The scheme has been subject to five formal rounds of detailed public consultation between 2016 and 2022.
If approved by the executive board next month, the GCP will ask Cambridgeshire County Council – as the highways authority – to submit a Transport & Works Act Order (TWAO) application to the government for permission to progress the scheme.
