This morning, local councillors Sarah Whitebread and Colin Rosenstiel attended a workshop organised by the County Council to look at the traffic issues in the Hobson Street / St Andrews Street / Emmanuel Street part of the city centre.

The workshop was organised because the County Council has been granted some funding by Government as part of their Better Bus Area Fund, to improve accessibilty for buses in the centre of town.

Along with local councillors, there were representatives there from Stagecoach, the City and County Councils, taxi companies, the cycling campaign, Disabled user groups, Love Cambridge, the Grand Arcade and property management company Bidwells (there may well have been others, but I did not manage to get round all the tables).

The workshop was just a first meeting to look at the problems there are in the St Andrews Street Area, and identify some potential solutions.  Lots of problems were listed, such as:

 – Lack of a proper crossing point for pedestrians coming from Emmanuel Street to the Grand Arcade / Christs Lane to Lion Yard.

 – Over ranking of taxis in St Andrews Street making the area more hazardous for pedestrians and cyclists

 – Poor air quality

 – Bus layover times being too long, meaning buses sometimes cannot access their stop because there is another bus there, leading to the road being blocked

 – Cycles parked by lamp posts and in other places not designed for cycle parking causing problems for pedestrians

 – Frequent deliveries of only one or two small items

The solutions identified were many, and participants were invited to “think outside the box” for possible ideas to address the problems.  Some of the ideas were:

 – Encourage the colleges to have more adequate cycle parking within their walls

 – Remove the bus stops, or some of them, from St Andrews Street

 – Have a bus station underneath Christs Pieces (!)

 – Use smarter technology to have some kind of holding bay for the St Andrews Street taxi rank at Drummer Street, which alerts drivers when the St Andrews Street bay is free

 – Remove buses from the city centre altogether and instead have a reliable frequent shuttle service that takes people from satellite stops on the edge of the centre into the middle

 – Increase the size of the bus station at Drummer Street so that buses do not need to use St Andrews Street

 – Coordinate deliveries into the city somehow, so that they are taken to a point outside the centre, grouped together and then taken in in one go.

There were many more ideas besides – there are just the main ones I remember!  Some of these are of course controversial, which is partly why we are writing this up now – if residents have views on any of the proposed ideas, it would be excellent to hear them.  It should of course be noted that the BBAF grant is not enough to fund some of the more dramatic solutions proposed.

County Council staff are now going to look at the ideas in more detail, and come back with suggestions for the most workable solutions to a meeting of the same group on the 21st November, for further discussion.