Inquiry told Greater Cambridge Partnership ‘continues to believe that fanciful busways are only solution’

A former Parliamentary candidate has accused transport chiefs of being “obsessed” with costly new busways while ignoring simpler, more immediate solutions to congestion.

Miranda Fyfe, who stood for the Green Party in South Cambridgeshire at the General Election, launched a fierce attack on the Cambourne to Cambridge busway scheme, calling on ministers to reject the plans, when she spoke at a public inquiry into the project on Friday (26 September).

Arriving with her bus ticket in hand, she criticised the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) for an “obsession with busways,” which she said are “massively expensive, both in money terms and in embedded carbon cost of construction”.

Ms Fyfe argued the GCP’s project fails to address the city’s core transport issues, pointing out that buses already run along existing roads, with some small sections of bus lanes in place.

She said the proposed route drops passengers on a “narrow back road,” where services would still be held up by traffic or require long onward journeys.

“This busway will do absolutely nothing to address the problem of central Cambridge traffic. In fact, it will put the bus in a narrow back road, Grange Road, from where its journey onward to the city centre will, if anything, be even harder and more torturous than it is at present for the existing services using Madingley Road.”

The two-way 8.5-mile (13.6km) busway has been devised by the GCP on behalf of the highways authority, Cambridgeshire County Council, to improve public transport between the town and the city.

But the busway, expected to cost at least £200million, has faced huge opposition from campaigners for the off-road route it is due to take through the West Fields at Coton, which will mean cutting down hundreds of mature trees at Coton Orchard.

A public inquiry is under way and is due to sit each week from Tuesday to Friday until Friday, 21 November.

Instead, Ms Fyfe urged the GCP to prioritise more frequent services, simpler fare structures, and improvements to the current road network.

She claimed that after nearly a decade of funding, the authority had “paid vast amounts of money to an endless stream of consultancy firms” rather than investing in better buses, accusing leaders of clinging to “fanciful new busways” at the expense of real improvements for passengers.

“No doubt the GCP will have argued that they cannot possibly deliver their so-called high quality public transport that the city requires by only using the existing roads, but they have not even tried 10 years of the special City Deal funding,” Ms Fyfe warned.

Instead of spending money on consultants and other highly paid professional services, Ms Fyfe said the GCP “could have engaged consultants to review the genuine problems that existing passengers encounter, such as poor bus stop infrastructure, unclear ticket options, lack of safe and comfortable waiting facilities if changing between different services, [and] lack of clarity about routes and timetables”.

She added that the authority could have addressed these directly on the ground over the last 10 years, but “they continue to believe that fanciful new busways are the only solution to our transport woes or maybe they don’t actually believe it, but either because of the sunk cost fallacy, or perhaps because of vested interests who hope to gain lucrative construction contracts”.

“One way or another, they are hoping to persuade the Secretary of State for Transport that it’s the only solution. It is not,” she concluded.

The busway route is proposed to be built from Cambourne to Cambridge, via the new Bourn Airfield development, Hardwick, Coton, and the West Cambridge site.

After the session, the Bonkers Busway group, which opposes the GCP’s busway route, said: “The Cambourne to Cambridge inquiry has often felt like watching the emperor’s new clothes being paraded up and down. Miranda Fyfe stood up and said it plainly: the emperor is stark naked.

“There’s already a perfectly good road. Buses already use it. The real delays are in central Cambridge, not out in the fields. And this new ‘bus road’ won’t solve them – it will only dump passengers onto Grange Road, where traffic moves slower than treacle in January.

“She spoke of what Cambourne residents actually want – buses that go directly to the Science Park in the north or to Addenbrooke’s and the Biomedical Campus in the south – not a detour through West Cambridge just to keep the tailors busy. And she nailed the GCP’s favourite defence – ‘just because they’ve poured millions into glossy plans doesn’t mean the Secretary of State must approve a poor scheme’.

“Ten years of City Deal funding – half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money – and what do we have to show for it? Consultants’ invoices and drawings of invisible finery.”

The inquiry continues and runs until 21 November.