There will be more road diversions from tomorrow — at least tomorrow is the date advised by Cambridgeshire County Council — as they begin a new road layout.

Motorists will not be able to turn into Brooklands Avenue from Hills Road during the period of the work, which could take seven months or more, but will instead be diverted down Long Road.

The County Council has trialled cycle lanes on the bridge this year. The trial has been very well received, surprisingly so — and they are now installing permanent cycle lanes. Bizarrely, the new layout won’t be the same as the one that’s been trialled, but the cycle lane will actually be in the middle of the carriageway. My concern is that some less confident cyclists, or people cycling with children, will be nervous about being in the middle of the road. I hope my fears are misfounded.

On the positive side, the cycle lane will be a good wide one of over 2 metres, and there will be new signals at the end as well as improved junction arrangements and access to the station. For the full story, see the County Council’s website.

I have had several complaints about the drains problems in Hills Road. Whenever we have heavy rainfall, the northbound side of the road turns into a mini-canal. The cycleways are unuseable so you have to go in the road with the cars, and you get a shower as you are waiting to cross Long Road.

Late last year, the gulleys were jetted in various places on Hills Road but that hasn’t solved the problem. The gentleman I deal with at the County Council said he would try a new way of investigating to see where the break in the pipe is, possibly with a CCTV camera, but he told me it would cost extra money and couldn’t promise when it might be done.

Given the very high number of pedestrians and cyclists who use Hills Road, it seems to me it would be worth spending money on so we can actually use the pavements and cycle lanes. After all, there is little point spending millions on cycle lanes on the bridge if you get knocked over as you approach it because you suddenly have to leave the cycle lane where it turns into a stream.

Cambridge workers are being urged to take part in a Cycle Challenge. We are being pitted against The Other Place. We’ve beaten Oxford in the Boat Race and University Challenge already this year, so here’s the next trial of fortitude!

It works like this: you sign up at your place of work, then encourage your colleagues to do the same, then log your journeys (all of them, not just the commuting ones). The campaign aims to get more new cyclists doing short journeys of just 10 minutes (1 or 2 miles for most people).

The list of Cambridge organizations that has already signed up is impressive and I am pleased to say it includes the City and County Councils as well as both universities.

Read all about it here.

Train passengers are being asked to allow extra time to get to Cambridge railway station while work is carried out to improve public transport.

To keep all traffic moving and minimise delay,s the roundabout outside the station will have temporary traffic lights in place for the next two weeks (starting next Tuesday, 4th May).

The work is part of a Cambridgeshire County Council project to create a new railway station bus interchange for all buses. Bus services will continue to operate as normal, but passengers will get on and off buses at temporary stops on Station Road.

Clear signs 60 metres from the railway station on Station Road will mark the temporary bus stops on both sides of the road. For safety reasons, no vehicles will be able to stop outside the front of the station building. Railway Station managers are asking people dropping off and picking up passengers to use the short stay car park.

Warning signs are in place to inform motorists of the work.

Cambridge councillors at the Lib Dem party conference came home from Birmingham with an award for our work on improving transport from the Local Government Association Liberal Democrat Group. It is the ‘Improving Transport Award 2010′.

Although the County Council is the main transport authority, the City Council were praised for some of our innovative ideas, such as car parks charging recognizing low emissions vehicles and charging points for electric cars. The judges were particularly impressed by our toad-friendly cattle grids on the common … also good for bikes!

Cambridgeshire County Council’s Highways Department has promised thorough repairs to the potholes in our area next week.

Queen Edith’s Focus Team member Jean Swanson is keeping a list of all potholes in the Queen Edith’s area and passing them on to the County Council.  Help us make sure they don’t miss any by sending us the details of where the pothole is (nearby house number and street name, whether in the middle of the road or the cycleway) and what it’s like. You can contact Jean at jsswanson@ntlworld.com. You can also report it to Cambridgeshire County Council on line.

Well done to the person who did a citizen’s repair on two deep holes running across Rock Road, by filling them with rubble. The County Council has assured me that they are on the list of holes to be ‘cut and patched’ and promised to get the contractor to attend to them asap.

There are about 2,000 potholes across the county, so the repairs are going to take some time. I have never seen the roads so bad.

My colleague, Cllr Sebastian Kindersley, is in the news today calling on the Conservative-run County Council to take immediate and urgent action.

Did you know that only one in four women and girls in the UK ever cycles? I was staggered by this statistic, which came out of research carried out by Sustrans last year. It resulted in a 9,000 petition to the Minister for Transport asking for safer cycle routes.

The Cambridge Cycling Campaign (of which I am a member) is working on encouraging more women and girls to take up cycling as an everyday way of getting about.

They are putting on two events:

On Wednesday 10th March they will be showing the film ‘Beauty and the Beast — why British girls don’t cycle’.

‘Ride for Joy’ is a big fashion cycling event on Saturday 20th March. That’s NOT an oxymoron. The idea is to wear your ordinary clothes, but still be as stylish as you please. We’ll be riding around the centre of town, meeting  at Lammas Land at 2 p.m. and fetching up at Parkers Piece for a speaker later. For the latest news, see the Cambridge Cycling Campaign website. b

LOVE CAMBRIDGE, the city centre partnership, has teamed up with Cambridge Nespapers, Park & Ride and Stagecoach to launch ‘Wonderful Wednesdays’, a great deal to encourage people to visit Cambridge for shopping, culture, entertainment or just to enjoy our fine city.

Wonderful Wednesdays runs all through March and offers two Park & Ride bus fares for the price of one every Wednesday afternoon in March, on production of a voucher.

To download the vital voucher, visit Love Cambridge, phone them on 01223 457179, or email helen.hames@love-cambridge.co.uk

I picked up an interesting piece of news at a Lib Dem meeting last Thursday. Local bus operator, Stagecoach, is so exasperated at the never-ending delays to the Guided Bus that it is letting everyone know.

Its fleet of 15 buses bought a year ago for the busway used to sport ads saying ‘I’ll be on the busway soon — will you?’ These strips were replaced last week with new ones plaintively asking ‘Will I be on the busway soon?’

Stagecoach bought the buses a year ago (for a cool three million pounds), but the opening of the busway seems no closer, with Cambridgeshire County Council in deep dispute with their contractor. Not surprising Stagecoach are narked.

Meanwhile, Conservative-run Cambridgeshire County Council is to spend five million pounds of taxpayers’ money just on legal costs . . . not to mention the additional costs of the busway itself, which is not surprisingly way over budget.

Councillors on the Cambridge traffic committee have approved a 20mph speed limit trial in the Wulfstan Way area. The trial will start in March and last for twelve months.

It will cover Wulfstan Way, Gunhild Way and Godwin Way, and the three cul-de-sacs in that area.

The Wulfstan Way area was chosen because it has a high number of pedestrians and cyclists, and several community facilities – churches, schools, doctors’ surgeries and shops.

There is a larger trial in Cambridge city centre but this is the only one out of town. Queen Edith’s is leading the way! Full details of the scheme can be seen on the County Council’s website.

The City Council had cleared the graffiti completely from the bus stop by Friday, thanks for the rapid response!

To report graffiti within the city, email graffiti@cambridge.gov.uk.

No sign of action on the broken timetable display from the County Council yet; let’s hope it doesn’t take too long.

Real time information — the lit-up displays at bus stops that tell you when the buses are on their way — are good examples of bus companies and councils working together, and they are very useful if you’re trying to decide which bus to take, or whether it’s quicker to walk.

I know that because when (occasionally) a display is out of order, people tell me!

At present, this is the case with the display at the stop outside the Perse School on Hills Road. I noticed this one myself as it’s my regular bus stop, and as the bus shelter is copiously adorned with graffiti my guess is that the time display may be the work of a vandal.

I have reported both the broken RTI display and the graffiti, to the County Council and e City Council respectively. It will be interesting to see which gets sorted out first … do let me know.

Bus

I am very pleased to report that the bus changes proposed by Stagecoach have been postponed — see their website http://www.stagecoachbus.com/cambridge/news2_7282.html

This is welcome news, especially given the announcement from the Conservative County Council that the Guided Bus will not be open until January or later.

If you haven’t signed our petition yet, then please do. If you have, please get your friends to sign. And keep those comments coming! Stagecoach bus petitionBus petition

County Council officers will be showing new plans for a central hybrid cycle lane on Hills Road Bridge this week. The design will build on the trial scheme already in place and you can view plans on Tuesday 24th and Monday 30th November:

Tue 24th: 5.00 - 7.30, College Hall, Hills Road VI Form College

Monday 30th: 5.00 - 7.30, Science Lecture Room, Hills Road VI Form College

Stagecoach, the major bus operator in Cambridge, has announced changes to services, as reported previously. The changes include cutting two services, the Citi 2 and Citi 7, which will go down from six an hour to four. The changes are set to take effect on 29th November. There has been no consultation with the public, only with the Conservative-run County Council, which has raised no objections.

The changes will affect hospital patients as well as sixth-form students at Hills Rd and Long Rd VI Form Colleges and the Lib Dems are asking Stagecoach to reconsider.

If you would like to do the same, please sign our petition – and pass it on to your friends.

 The City Council has no powers over bus operators — it has been thus since the deregulation of buses under Margaret Thatcher — but we will pass on any comments to Stagecoach.

bus-petition.pdf

I have been notified* of changes to Stagecoach and Whippet bus services from Sunday 29 November 2009. The table shows which services are changing and the impact of that change. Bus changes No 09

One change that affects us is to the Citi 1 and Citi 2 routes. The Citi 1 will now go down Queen Edith’s Way not Wulfstan Way, while the Citi 2 will go down Wulfstan Way instead of Queen Edith’s Way. The Citi 2 will also reduce to one bus every 15 minutes, so residents of Wulfstan Way and the Gunhild Estate will have a less frequent service.

The Citi 7 and 2 will also reduce to a 15-minute frequency, instead of 10.

Above, I used the word ‘notified’ not consulted because I wasn’t! But I am of course very willing to pass on comments and make views known before the changes take effect.

The real time information display at the bus stop near Hills Road VI Form College has been out of action for some time, meaning people have to walk down to the next bus stop to find out whether there’s a bus due.

I reported this to the County Council on the 12th September, and so did two of our Focus deliverers. A response has been a long time coming!

It transpires that there has been a power failure to the shelter, which has burnt the fuses. What alarms me is that neither the City nor County Council had staff available and able to repair it – which is the main reason for the delay.

 See my latest mail from the County Council, which promises a remedy soon.

Dear Cllr Taylor,  Apologies for the delay in getting this display up and running. Our
contractor’s engineers did inspect the site almost immediately. It was found that there
was a power failure to the shelter, which has burnt the main fuse to both the shelter and the display. Because this is not part of the display’s circuitry, our contractors were
neither able nor authorized to replace the fuse.  I have since then been in contact with
the Street Lighting team at the council, who as well is not responsible for power to
shelters, and we have sourced a certified electrician to do the job. I am expecting that
they will visit the shelter sometime next week, and let me know what the outcome is.
Hopefully this should be sorted out next week, but if there are any further delays, I will
let you know.

Speeding traffic causes countless road accidents and makes the roads a hostile environment for bikes and pedestrians. So it’s good news that the County Council has changed its policy to allow 20mph speed limits in Cambridgeshire.

City and county councillors have approved Wulfstan Way as the area to run a trial 20mph zone, on account of the high number of pedestrians and cyclists using it and its many community facilities such as schools and churches. County council officers are proposing to put up 20mph signs in Wulfstan Way and other nearby streets including Godwin Way and Gunhild Way. There will also be posters urging motorists to slow down.

Wulfstan Way is a busy road for pedestrians and cyclists, including many schoolchildren and the Queen Edith Primary School is on Godwin Way. There have been four recent accidents in the area involving cyclists or pedestrians.

Comments are welcome, preferably by 21st October please.

Now that the cycle lanes have been in place for a week, I’d be interested to know what people think of them.

Cambridgeshire County Council has just announced two bits of news:

1. that the roadworks for the Guided Bus will finish on Sunday - good news even though it is six months late

2. that they will immediately start a 4-month trial of segregating cyclists and motor traffic by putting them in separate lanes on the uphill parts of the bridge, divided by a ‘rumble strip’ (white line to you and me). They are going to put in temporary kerbs and white lines on Sunday night as soon as they finish the Guided Bus work, so we will wake up on Monday morning to a new traffic layout.

It’s the second of these that takes my breath away. As a cyclist, it’s great news, as the bridge is just about the most dangerous place to cycle in Cambridge. It will make the bridge useable by less confident cyclists including children. However, it’s a shame the County didn’t give more warning before embarking on such a bold plan. They have consultation meetings and exhibitions next week (Tuesday at Hills Rd VI Form College, Thursday at St Paul’s Church) but they don’t have much time to tell people about them.

I hope the manic motorist tendency gives a fair trial to the new arrangements, but more important, I’m pleased that we will have a safer cycling environment for the 4,000 people who ride their bikes over the bridge every day.

To find out more, see http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/transport/cambridgegateway