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?

Why are we waiting?

Cambridgeshire Liberal Democrats have launched a petition to reverse the Tories’ 100 per cent cuts to rural bus services.

The petition, started by county councillor Susan van der Ven, “Stopping the cuts to bus services in Cambridgeshire” reads:

“We the people of Cambridgeshire are opposed to the Conservative County Council’s decision to scrap 100% of funding for subsidised buses, which led to an application for Judicial Review.

“Socially necessary bus services are vital to the whole of Cambridgeshire, especially for young people who need to access to centres of employment, those with mobility issues who wish to access the wider community and its resources, and for tackling the root problem of ‘rural isolation’.

“We also believe that the “Cambridgeshire Future Transport” project, to which half of bus funding has been transferred, is fundamentally flawed and not capable of delivering an adequate replacement for the existing public transport network, never mind the improved system that has been promised.

“We call on the Conservative administration to reinstate 100% of the cuts to bus funding and to conduct a systematic view of Cambridgeshire residents’ transport needs before making any changes to it.”

The petition can be found here: http://epetition.cambridgeshire.public-i.tv/epetition_core/view/Buses

Hills Road Sixth Form College recently applied for planning permission to demolish their existing sports pavilion on Sedley Taylor Road and build a new one. The application was considered at the recent South Area meeting on 7th November.

Many residents of Sedley Taylor Road have concerns about parking and access to the existing sports pavilion and playing fields, and fear that the new pavilion could increase these difficulties. There has been a well supported petition, and residents met the College before the application to express their concerns. So parking and traffic were very much in councillors’ minds at the meeting, and although the application was approved, one of the conditions was that the College submit a travel plan including measures to discourage private motor vehicles and to encourage other means of transport. The travel plan has now been received. Here it is: HRSFCtravelplan

I have asked that it come back to the Area Meeting for consideration.The next meeting is on 9^th January, at the Cherry Hinton Village Centre and begins at 7.30 p.m. The travel plan is the third item on the agenda.

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

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.

Cambridgeshire Highways will be resurfacing Long Road between the Hills Road Junction and Long Road VI Form College from Tuesday 9th August 2011 to Friday 12th August. The work will be carried out during the daytime from 09:30hrs to 15:30hrs. Traffic will be controlled by temporary traffic lights.

If you have any queries regarding the work please contact Jonathan Clarke, Area Maintenance Engineer for this area either on email (Jonathan.Clarke@cambridgeshire.gov.uk) or telephone Cambridgeshire Highways on 0345 045 5212.

Amanda and 20mph sign

There was a lively discussion on the Queen Edith’s 20mph trial at the Cambridge South Area meeting on Monday night. The meeting was held at the Cherry Hinton Village Centre for the first time, and was well attended, with many people there specially for either the 20mph item on the agenda or the policing session.

Mr Richard Preston from Cambridgeshire County Council Highways Dept was there to report and listen, and at my request, the police stayed on for the discussion.

Despite disappointing speed tests showing that drivers have not changed their behaviour much, here was general support for continuing with the lower 20mph limit, but there were also emphatic demands for two things that would make it work much better:

• better signage (painted areas on the road or flashing signs)
• police enforcement

There was a request for the lower limit to be extended to the whole of the estate, a change which councillors are happy to take on board. We limited it to Gunhild, Godwin and Wulfstan Ways initially, on the grounds that these roads had schools – but the point of a trial is that you can learn from it and make changes.

Mr James Woodburn of the Cambridge Cycling Campaign presented some very useful evidence, explaining how Portsmouth had brought in 20mph speed limits across 94% of the overall road length. They had taken a much more holistic approach, getting police buy-in from the beginning, making signage really prominent and giving much more information about the trial before it began. The result had been very good adherence to the lower speeds.

We asked Inspector Kerridge what enforcement there had been and what the police could offer us for the future. He didn’t give us a direct answer about what enforcement there had been (I suspect none) but explained the police had needed to do some research first about the viability of enforcing a 20mph limit. But he did say: ‘Can we enforce 20? Yes we can!’ and explained the approach he would like to take (talking to people and advising them if they were driving at over 20mph, following that up with a letter, before actually ticketing), while making it clear that the police would not enforce every 20mph limit without local requests to do so in areas where infringement was a particular problem. So: halfway there.

Mr Preston from the County Council told us more signage would cost about £500 (the cost of a painting gang) and that interactive signs could cost up to £5,000. The County had initially been trying not to clutter the area up with too many signs and taken a low-key approach – but in v iew of our comments would look favourably on local requests for more signs … if funding could be found. That may mean we have to fund them from Area Committee funds.

Mr Preston will report back on what we said on Monday to a joint county/city transport committee, and it is expected that the lower limit will remain. We evidently have more work to do on securing the better signage and police enforcement, but Monday’s meeting was a constructive sharing of what’s needed to improve the scheme. Thanks to all those who came along to speak, especially Claire from Godwin Way and Jim and James the Cycling Campaign, and to everyone who sent in surveys, or made comments on the Queen Edith’s  Facebook page.

Oh … our trial appear to have made the news!

BBC News

BBC News (Cambridgeshire)