Opinion: Why I believe it’s time councillors scrapped their support for the obsolete £200m Cambourne to Cambridge busway scheme
Opinion | Anna Gazeley, whose family own and run Coton Orchard, established in 1922, questions whether the Cambourne to Cambridge busway is needed in light of the government’s backing for East West Rail.
Next Tuesday (11 February), Cambridgeshire County Council will be asked to ‘confirm’ in a resolution its support for the Greater Cambridge Partnership’s (GCP) designed off-road Cambourne to Cambridge busway—a scheme first approved by councillors in March 2023. But much has changed since then, and so should their decision.
A new government is now in charge, and it has made crystal clear that East West Rail is happening. Regardless of its final route, it will connect Cambourne and Cambridge by rail, making the GCP’s £200m+ busway redundant before a single tree is felled. And yet, the GCP ploughs on, seemingly unfazed by the reality that this project is unnecessary, outdated, and financially reckless.
If councillors approve it, they won’t just be backing an obsolete scheme - they’ll be burying the county (and taxpayers) in a financial sinkhole so vast it might qualify as a new geological feature. Or is that just the planned Madingley Hill reservoir, part of the region’s vital water security strategy, which the GCP busway is now set to run straight over?
This matters beyond Cambridge. It’s a cautionary tale of how unelected quangos, flush with taxpayer cash, continue to push grandiose infrastructure projects long after they’ve been overtaken by events. The public, left with no real means to hold them accountable, just gets the bill. If the country is ever to get serious about infrastructure spending, perhaps we should start by ensuring projects solve a problem that still exists by the time they’re built.
Rod Liddle wrote in The Times, when this busway was first conceived, that it wouldn’t be ‘green’ even if powered by unicorn tears. Two years on, and it’s only gotten worse—now it’s an astoundingly expensive, taxpayer-funded white elephant, charging headfirst into a reservoir.
