As part of the £90m in funding that the County Council is making available through prudential borrowing over the next few years to fund road improvements, they propose to carry out some improvement works at the Catholic Church junction between Hills Road, Lensfield Road, Regent Street and Gonville Place (also sometimes referred to as Hyde Park Corner).

Cllr Sarah Whitebread recently met with the County Council signal works team and Cycling Officer to discuss the proposals.  Overall, we think they represent a significant improvement at this difficult junction – particularly for pedestrians and cyclists.   However, we would welcome input from residents on the detail of the proposals.

Please do take a look at the consultation document below, and respond with your comments.

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Cllr Sarah Whitebread had a letter published in yesterday’s edition of Cambridge News, calling for the County Council to take firmer action to improve air quality in the city centre.  The text of the letter is below.

“It is time for the County Council to get serious on air quality and be more ambitious in its targets for bus operators.

At a council meeting earlier this week, the “Quality Bus Partnership” led by the County Council presented its annual report, outlining its efforts to improve the emissions standards of its vehicles. Or rather it didn’t; no-one from the board and no County Council Cabinet member turned up to defend it.

The report was extremely feeble.

In 2010 a parliamentary report showed that poor air quality in the UK could be responsible for up to 50,000 premature deaths per year. Yet in Cambridge, the Conservative County Council is still allowing old buses, dating back to before 1998, to belch out nitrous oxides and particulates across the city.  This is in stark contrast to the City Council which demands that new taxis be no more than four years old.

What works for taxis should work for buses too. Air pollution in the city centre is way above national objectives.  The County Council should listen to residents, workers and shoppers in Cambridge concerned about the air they breathe, and take firm action on emissions now.”

Residents may be interested in this, taken from the YMCA website:

Seventy-one YMCAs in England will join forces with YMCAs in 74 countries across the world on Saturday 13 October in a bid to break the world record for the largest number of people to shoot basketballs on the same day.

The YMCA World Challenge 2012 aims to gather five million people worldwide to set the new world record and at the same time highlight and celebrate the important work of the YMCA across the globe.

Invented at a YMCA in 1891, basketball is one of the most popular sports in the world and the YMCA has used it as a way to empower people and promote a healthy life style for many years.

As well as the record attempt YMCAs will be celebrating their work by staging local events including sports contests, music concerts, festivals, photo exhibitions and many other cultural activities.

The ‘Challenge’ officially starts at 8h00, local time, in New Zealand and ends in Hawaii at 17h00 following the time zone progression around the globe. The event in Cambridge will be on Parkers Piece from 12-4pm.

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.