Real Time Information is the technical term for the lighted panels at bus stops that tell you how long your bus will take to arrive. Quite handy when you are trying to work out whether to get the bus that doesn’t take you quite where you want to go, or wait for the next direct one; or even to decide whether or not you’d be quicker just walking.

We’ve been asked for views on which of the following stops benefit, or would benefit most from RTI displays. If you use buses from these stops, please give us your views:

• Mowbray Road opposite Mander Way (inbound)
• Mowbray Road near Mander Way (outbound)
• Mowbray Road near Glebe Road (inbound)
• Mowbray Road opposite Glebe Road (outbound)
• Mowbray Road near Holbrook Road (inbound)
• Mowbray Road opposite Holbrook Road (outbound)
• Wulfstan Way opposite no 13 (outbound)
• Wulfstan Way outside no 13 (inbound)
• Wulfstan Way opposite Queen Edith Chapel (outbound)
• Wulfstan Way outside Queen Edith Chapel (inbound)

transport icons

Transport and traffic are two of the hottest topics of debate in Cambridge. So I know there are lots of ideas for improving transport. Now it looks as though we may be able to put some of them into practice.

By law (Town & Country Planning Act 1990), councils may require money from developers to offset the impact of their developments. As this is laid out in Section 106 of the Act, the contribution is dubbed ‘Section 106 money’ by councillors. I do not know what the developers call it.

Cambridgeshire County Council is asking us for our ideas on how this money should be spent in the south of Cambridge. Projects should ‘mitigate the effect of the additional transport-related movements from new development’. The officers have come up with some proposals already:

• steps and cycle channels from the Hills Road Bridge to the Guided Busway cycle route
• a clean-up of signage on the ring road

They are asking us for further suggestions, and we shall be discussing proposals at the next South Area Committee on 5th March (Cherry Hinton Village Centre).

So please let me have your brilliant ideas – come to the meeting too, if you can, as it is open to everyone. I shall post an agenda on this site nearer the time, so you can see where the discussion on transport plans is. If you’d like to join in the discussion, why not post a comment here?

OK, I’ll get things started:

My idea is signage and low-level lighting on the Guided Bus cycleway.

What’s yours?

After a lovely mild autumn, it is now  feeling appropriately wintry for December!

Which calls to mind an idea first put to me last summer when the temperature was a balmy 82 degrees. It is a creative scheme to help the vulnerable elderly.

The people who came up with it are the creative folk at Cambridgeshire Community Foundation (CCF), a charity that matches grant givers to groups or individuals in need of funds.

Here’s how it works:

Most people over 60 receive a Winter Fuel Payment of between £100-300. It’s what is called a universal state benefit, so everyone eligible for a pension gets it. I know it is much appreciated by many older people, who need the extra money to heat their homes properly, yet I hear some people say they are comfortably off and can manage perfectly well without state benefits.

Here is an answer for them. If they prefer to give the money to help someone less fortunate, they can donate their Winter Fuel Payments to the CCF’s Winter Fuel Fund. The Fund will go to charitable projects for older people – for example, it might pay for an old lady to go and have lunch at a day centre one day a week, or for an outing. People can register their interest on line at http://www.cambscf.org.uk/the-winter-fuel-fund.html; or email Sam Weller at sam@cambscf.org.uk.

18 years of dropped kerbs!

Could I have a dropped kerb on Blinco Grove, please?

That was the very first thing I was asked to do as a new councillor back in 1994 when I was first elected. The request came from a lady who used a wheelchair and needed a dropped kerb near her home, (‘mobility crossing’) in order to cross the road. I am sorry to say that I had a forest of bureaucracy to fight through before we got the dropped kerb. Nevertheless, it is a request that comes up time and time again.

I was pleased to help, but it was only when I tried to cross East Road wheeling a friend’s toddler in a pushchair that it really came home to me how difficult it is to do a simple thing like crossing the road if the varying levels of kerb and road mean your wheels don’t work. At the time, I drew a deep breath and heaved up the pushchair  – and thought about how much harder this would be for someone in a wheelchair.

Over the years I’ve been a councillor there have been many new dropped kerbs in Queen Edith’s. Although the public highways are really the responsibility of the County Council, the City Council has funded many dropped kerbs through its environmental improvements programmes. I think the most recent one round here is on Hills Road, to allow easier access from the hospital to Nightingale Avenue.

I am pleased to see that the City Council is running a mobility survey asking where people would most like to see new dropped kerbs in the city centre. You have until Friday to comment: go to http://www.cambridge.gov.uk/ccm/content/consultations/mobility-survey.en. If you have ideas for new ones in Queen Edith’s, please tell me or one of the other ward councillors.

At the South Cambridge Area meeting this week (7th November), police agreed two new priorities:

• attending the Morley and Queen Edith’s Primary Schools and Homerton Children’s Centre to crack down on illegal or dangerous driving and parking
• cycle theft in Trumpington, as there has been a big increase in the last few months, mainly in Hills Road

They will continue with these objectives from the last quarter, slightly adapted to take account of offenders moving from one area to another:

• moped misuse in Queen Edith’s and Cherry Hinton
• anti-social behaviour and drug misuse in Cherry Hinton

Thanks to Mrs Ann Winter from Queen Edith’s, who addressed the meeting about the problems experienced with bad driving and parking in Godwin Way (the road where Queen Edith’s Primary School is). The petition for yellow lines on the Godwin Way/ Close corner now has nearly 50 signatures: do sign it if you haven’t already. Thanks to Layla Vandenbergh, who has put it on line on the County Council’s website: http://epetition.cambridgeshire.public-i.tv/epetition_core/view/GodwinParking. I have paper copies to sign if anyone would like one.

Residents on Godwin Way and Godwin Close are concerned about poor parking by motorists, particularly on the corner of Godwin Close. This blocks the view for motorists and pedestrians and is particularly dangerous because there is a primary school on Godwin Way, the Queen Edith Primary School, taking children as young as three.

At a resident’s request, I have prepared a petition calling on the County Council to introduce parking controls, probably yellow lines on this corner – corners should of course not be parked on according to the Highway Code.

If you would like to sign, you can download the petition here: Parking_Godwin. The survey is also on line at the Cambridgeshire County Council website:
http://epetition.cambridgeshire.public-i.tv/epetition_core/community/petition/1645

Time to recycle Eric Pickles?

‘For most people, the only visible service that they get from the council is the removal of refuse.’

Eric Pickles, Daily Mail, 30th September

What a fatuous comment and how deeply insulting to the thousands of people who work in councils throughout the country.

The hardworking people who empty our bins and sweep the streets have hundreds of thousands of colleagues working alongside them in their councils: 1.7 million according to the LGA1 – yet Pickles says they are invisible.

One wonders what kind of world Pickles’s people inhabit. Do they not register their children at birth or send them to school? Do they not bury their dead? Do they never use a public toilet? Do they fly over the pavements and roads? Do they never look at a tree or stroll in the park? And one assumes they have their own personal fire engine? All of these are services provided by either Cambridge City Council or Cambridgeshire County Council.

‘All the Council does for me is empty my bins’ is not a clever remark from anyone, but there is no excuse for this kind of talk from Eric Pickles, who is the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. He is responsible for local government and should know better. This casual denial of his army of council workers reduces his credibility. He is not fit for the job.

Would you like to see a Farmers’ Market in Queen Edith’s? Possibly outside the Wulfstan Way shops, or in the Hills Road area?

A farmers’ market is a market in which farmers, growers or producers from a defined local area are present in person to sell their own produce, direct to the public. All products sold should have been grown, reared, caught, brewed, pickled, baked, smoked or processed by the stallholder. For more information, see http://www.farmersmarkets.net/

Farmers’ markets are a great way of bringing producers and customers from the same area together. Not only do they support the local economy, but they gives you fresh and healthy food and they reduce food miles – helping the environment as well as making life easier for those who cannot get into town easily.

If you’d like to be involved, please contact me.

Sainsbury’s has applied for a premises licence (to sell alcohol and late-night refreshments) at the Cambridge Leisure Park on Clifton Road, where they plan to open a Sainsbury’s Local. They wish to sell alcohol between the hours of 6.00 a.m. and 11.00 p.m. Details can be found at www.cambridge.gov.uk/licences

If you live or work nearby, you qualify as an interested party and can make a representation on the application. Your comments must relate to one of Cambridge City Council’s four licensing objectives, which are:

• the prevention of crime and disorder
• public safety
• the prevention of public nuisance
• the protection of children from harm

You can comment on line on the Council’s website or fill in a form. Representation-form-person-body

I was surprised to see this application, since the Cambridge Leisure Park is designated as a cumulative impact area, ie a business has to demonstrate that it will not add to alcohol-related problems in the area. (See previous post: http://amandataylor.mycouncillor.org/2011/03/01/388/). The Leisure Park already has a high level of alcohol-related crime and it is hard to see how Sainsbury’s will be able to convince us that another off-licence facility won’t make things worse.

Watch this space.

Cold!

The temperature today is 82 degrees and it seems a bit bizarre to be writing about keeping warm this winter! However, I’ve just heard about a really creative idea for helping people in need — the vulnerable elderly, to be precise.  I found out about it recently when I visited the Cambridgeshire Community Foundation (CCF), a charity that matches grant givers to groups or individuals in need of funds.

Most people over 60 receive a Winter Fuel Payment of between £100-300. It’s what is called a universal state benefit, so everyone eligible for a pension gets it. I know it is much appreciated by many older people, who need the extra money to heat their homes properly, yet I hear some people say they are comfortably off and can manage perfectly well without state benefits.

Here is an answer for them. If they prefer to give the money to help someone less fortunate, they can donate their Winter Fuel Payments to the CCF’s Winter Fuel Fund. The Fund will go to charitable projects for older people – for example, it might pay for an old lady to go and have lunch at a day centre one day a week, or for an outing. People can register their interest on line at http://www.cambscf.org.uk/the-winter-fuel-fund.html; or email Sam Weller at sam@cambscf.org.uk.