Greater Cambridge Local Plan Issues & Options 2020

Nothing chosen

• We should aim to increase tree cover by planting trees in a way that complements cycling, creating safe, attractive and tree-lined routes. • Cycleways separated from car lanes by trees or shrubbery are ideal and Camcycle would support more of this.

• Accessible transport is vital for wellbeing and inclusion in our community. • Lack of access to transport (due to affordability, unreliability or the non-existence of transport options) is preventing people from accessing education, work and social opportunities. • Safe, convenient and high-quality cycling infrastructure is fully accessible to people of all ages and abilities. That means more people will be able to cycle, leading to more social inclusion for people who cannot afford to drive or use public transport. • Accessible cycling infrastructure means more children and people with mobility issues will be able to move freely around our region. • Inclusive cycle parking design standards will provide places for people to securely park their larger or adapted cycles. Properly designed cycling infrastructure can also be well-utilised by people on mobility scooters, electric wheelchairs, wheelchairs and other mobility aids. • Some forms of transport can have negative impacts on wellbeing and inclusion. Living near motorways and busy roads reduces well-being. Housing should be designed to be on quiet, local roads with a minimum of motor-traffic. Schools should never be on major roads. • Busy roads are polluted, noisy, and unsafe. They divide communities and trap people in their homes. Planning policies must not allow busy roads to harm communities in the future, and should help fix this problem in existing developments. • Making walking and cycling safer and more accessible will allow children to travel independently from their parents at an earlier age leading to improved emotional resilience. “Bicycling allows the user to explore their spatial surroundings and offers constant opportunity for spontaneous interaction with other users and the surrounding environment.” (te Brömmelstroet, 2017) “Many disabled people use cycles as a mobility aid, and many more would do so if the conditions were appropriate. People may be able to cycle perfectly well, but not stand unaided, cycle on two wheels, lift their cycles, or carry associated cycling gear off the cycle.” (Parkin, 2018) “According to Transport for London (TfL), in London alone 12% of Disabled people cycle regularly or occasionally, compared to 17% of non-Disabled people.” (Wheels for Wellbeing, 2019) “If we make cycling facilities inclusive of all types of cycles — and ensure transport modes are integrated and made accessible — more disabled people will make the choice of travelling actively.” (Wheels for Wellbeing, 2019) “Although not all neighbors wish to participate in street communities, streets should be places where communal life is possible and where it can happen if street dwellers want it to.” (Appleyard,1980) “People living nearer to the new M74 motorway tended to experience poorer mental wellbeing over time than those living further away. We saw a similar pattern in the M8 area, but here it was concentrated among people living with a chronic illness or disability.” (Ogilvie, 2017) “When it comes to the most important major schemes, the reality for some local authorities has been a reluctance to insist on conditions that they think might deter developers who offer economic regeneration. In other cases where planning officials and elected representatives have approved plans for obviously car-dependent development it seems they could not envision what the alternative might look like, or failed to appreciate the accumulated evidence of the collateral damage that a car-dependent society brings in the shape of congestion, environmental degradation and social ill health.” (Taylor, 2011) Evidence for our response to Question 16. • te Brömmelstroet, Marco et al. (2017). Travelling together alone and alone together: mobility and potential exposure to diversity. Applied Mobilities, 2:1, 1-15. • Parkin, John (2018). Designing for Cycle Traffic. Institute of Civil Engineers Publishing. • Wheels for Wellbeing (2019). A Guide to Inclusive Cycling. 3rd Edition. • Appleyard, Donald (1980). Livable Streets: Protected Neighborhoods?. Annals, AAPSS, 451. • Ogilvie D, Foley L, et al (2017). Health impacts of the M74 urban motorway extension: a mixedmethod natural experimental study. Public Health Res; 5: 3. • Taylor, Ian and Sloman, Lynn (2011). Thriving cities: integrated land use and transport planning.

• Camcycle has extensive experience of working with the planning system and we know that it is incredibly difficult for people to engage with and respond to planning applications and consultations. • If the Local Plan is to encourage more community participation then the systems used must be improved. • Simple things like determining the closure date of consultations or which document should be looked at for a summary of the planning application are too difficult with the current system let alone having sensible approaches to engagement. • Seeing the difference in quality and liveability of development of Marmalade Lane vs most other developments in the Cambridge region shows just how much more liveable and sustainable our developments can be when the community and the people who will live in the developments are involved in the design. • Out of town developers, concerned with profit above all else, frequently underestimate the needs of people who cycling, the number of people who will cycle and the extent of provision of cycling facilities. • Ensuring local people can contribute to these consultations and taking the contributions of organisations like Camcycle seriously can prevent the issues that arise from underprovision. Stronger planning policies developed with extensive community consultation will also help with these issues.

• It is important that planning policies specify that cycling infrastructure and facilities are treated as primary features of any development, not merely as afterthoughts that are relegated to poor locations and/or with poor lighting. • Cycle parking and cycleways intended for general-purpose travel should always be in well-lit and overlooked locations. • Homes should always have safe cycle routes to schools and parks, suitable for children. • To determine if people feel safe, we should reach out to the most vulnerable people in our community to assess safety. • Transport and cycling infrastructure must not just be designed for work commutes but for all types of uses and all types of users. • The cycle route network should connect people with everyday needs such as work, school, shops, surgeries and parks; the routes should pass in front of buildings and through places with natural surveillance to assure personal safety, and they should be fully accessible to people of all abilities. “As one example, the ‘Living First’ campaign in Vancouver required high-density neighborhoods to be aesthetically pleasant and full of amenities (e.g., easy access to parks, child-care facilities, and grocery stores; streetscapes with shops and row housing rather than blank high-rise walls; and safe, convenient mass-transit and pedestrian facilities). The resulting neighborhoods benefit not only CO2 emissions (two-thirds of trips are by mass transit, bicycle, or walking) but also public health: by reducing automobile usage, compact development also reduces traffic fatalities and obesity).” (Marshall, 2008) “Where good quality sustainable transport options are integrated into development at the planning stage or at the time of major investment they are well-used. Attempting to ‘retro-fit’ sustainable transport into existing conventional development is much more difficult as travel habits have already been established.” (Campaign for Better Transport, 2015) “The quality and safety of the pedestrian and cycling environment is important—particularly the perception of these things. Parental consent for children to walk or cycle to school, friends or playground is notoriously low in the UK by comparison with much of Europe, due to real or perceived traffic and stranger danger. Children’s freedom to roam has been curtailed. Physical improvement to route continuity, directness, safety, informal surveillance and aesthetic quality is a part of any strategy to change perceptions and culture.” (Barton, 2009) “The starting point for designing cycle facilities within the compass of Sustainable Traffic Safety is ‘Design for All’. Cyclists have few standard characteristics. On the contrary, cyclists in the Netherlands are a variegated bunch, in terms of age, sex, physical fitness and reasons for travelling.” (CROW, 2017, p. 28) “At the most basic level, inclusive cycle infrastructure should be step-free, offer a continuous and uninterrupted journey, and have clear and accessible wayfinding.” (Wheels for Wellbeing, 2019) “For the same reason that carriageways are illuminated, so too do cycleways need to be illuminated. This is especially the case if they are designed for purposeful travel, such as year-round commuting.” (Parkin, 2018) Evidence for our response to Question 18. • Marshall, Julian D. (2008). Reducing urban sprawl could play an important role in addressing climate change. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2008, 42, 9, 3133–3137. • Campaign for Better Transport (2015). Getting there: How sustainable transport can support new development. • CROW (1996–2017). The Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic. CROW-Fietsberaad. Ede, Nederland. • Wheels for Wellbeing (2019). A Guide to Inclusive Cycling. 3rd Edition. • Taylor, Ian and Sloman, Lynn (2011). Thriving cities: integrated land use and transport planning. • Barton, Hugh (2009). Land use planning and health and well-being. Land Use Policy. • Parkin, John (2018). Designing for Cycle Traffic. Institute of Civil Engineers Publishing.

• New developments must have a safe, convenient and high-quality cycling network that connects every home, business and public transport stop. • Every child should be able to easily access their schools, local parks, and friends’ homes by foot or bike. Parents should feel safe and confident that, once their children reach a suitable age, they can allow them to walk or cycle on their own in the community. • Cycling should always be the quickest and most convenient transport option for local journeys within new developments, • It must be less convenient to drive through the new development for short journeys than to cycle. Driving routes on new sites should be circuitous and directed towards the exterior of the site away from where people live and gather. • Within the site, extensive deployment of filtered permeability gives freedom to people walking or cycling to take direct routes, while preventing drivers from rat-running and endangering the public. Public transport can also benefit from filtered permeability, using bus gates or dedicated rights-of-way. • Making walking and cycling accessible for people with mobility issues will enable many more people to improve their physical health through active travel and improve their mental health and wellbeing by reducing isolation. • New developments must be designed to prevent parking on pavements • High-quality cycle parking must be provided with all buildings. • Better rubbish management should ensure bins don’t litter the landscape and block paths. • Priority over side roads must be given to people walking and cycling. • Junctions must be designed to enable people of all abilities to cycle safely through them. • The Local Plan must acknowledge that cycles are also mobility aids for many people. There should never be any situation where ‘cyclist dismount’ signs are installed. • The NHS recommends 150 minutes of cardiovascular exercise per week for adults to maintain health into old age. New developments which are planned with cycling as a priority will make this easy for people to achieve by being able to cycle as a means of transport. “Street layout and design strongly influences how people make their daily journeys. Travel by noncar modes is highest in pleasant ‘liveable’ streets with low levels of traffic, trees, interesting features, attractive shop-fronts and convenient direct lines of access to facilities like public transport.” (Taylor, 2011) “In cities such as Freiburg, Groningen and Zwolle the principle of filtered permeability is acknowledged as a key element in their success in restraining car use and promoting alternatives. Through traffic is channelled onto a limited network of main roads. Suburban developments are often designed as giant culs de sac for cars, while short cuts provide a far more permeable network for the sustainable modes. People use these modes — particularly cycling — because of the time and convenience advantage compared to travelling by car.” (Melia, 2008) “Cycling to work is linked to a substantial decrease in the risk of developing and dying from cancer or heart disease.” (Torjesen, 2017) “While the UK is spending more on the National Health Service, it should also aim to reduce illness through investing in healthy environments. In many towns and cities in Western Europe, priority has been given to the quality of the environment and to inclusive accessibility, and the culture allows children to play in and roam their public realm. [...] The comparative study of child health and well-being in OECD countries puts British children as amongst the least healthy and least happy. Spatial planning in its broad sense, and the character of settlements, are part of the UK problem, and need to become part of the solution.” (Barton, 2009) “[There] are immense quality-of-life improvements that come with prioritizing the bicycle as a mobility device, especially among the young and elderly. A 2013 study conducted by UNICEF found that Dutch kids topped the list for overall well-being when compared to children in the world’s 29 wealthiest countries, in part because of their ability to roam freely without parent supervision.” (Bruntlett, 2018) “The basic layout of [Houten] consists of two train stations, each surrounded by a ring road with a radius of approximately one kilometer. The rest of the city is covered by an extensive, 129 kilometer network of bicycle paths. There are 31 residential districts, each of which is only accessible to cars via the peripheral ring roads encircling the town. However, the network of paths for cyclists and pedestrians includes a thoroughfare that passes directly through the town center, providing fltered permeability for cyclists and pedestrians. The majority of schools and important buildings are located along this thoroughfare. Due to this design, cycling is the most direct mode of transportation and is often even faster than travel by car. Houten’s innovative design features along with the city’s persistent policies to favor cyclists and pedestrians have resulted in numerous measured benefts, including improved cyclist and pedestrian safety, increased activity levels of residents, and reduced use of motorized vehicles. Furthermore, this case study demonstrates that innovative design features are not limited to new districts within a city, but can be applied to new cities as a whole.” (Foletta, 2014) Evidence for our response to Question 19. • Taylor, Ian and Sloman, Lynn (2011). Thriving cities: integrated land use and transport planning. • Melia, S (2008). Neighbourhoods should be made permeable for walking and cycling — but not for cars. Local Transport Today, Jan 23 2008. • Torjesen, Ingrid(2017). Cycling to work has substantial health benefits, study finds. BMJ2017;357:j1944. • Barton, Hugh (2009). Land use planning and health and well-being. Land Use Policy. • Bruntlett, Melissa and Bruntlett, Chris (2018). Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality. Island Press. • Foletta, Nicole (2014). Case Study: Houten. ITDP Europe.

• We can achieve enormous improvements in air quality transitioning away from car dependency towards very high levels of cycling and walking. • Transport Assessments must demonstrate how developments will improve air quality. • Developments should be designed so that there is minimal car traffic near homes, schools, and places where people gather. In existing developments, traffic management should be introduced to remove and minimise car traffic. • Electric cars will still lead to significant pollution from tyres, road wear and brakes and will not resolve the issue of congestion or road danger. • Any electric car charging infrastructure that is provided in new and existing developments must not undermine walking and cycling accessibility. “Cars must be driven out of cities to tackle the UK’s air pollution crisis, not just replaced with electric vehicles, according to the UK government’s top adviser. Prof Frank Kelly said that while electric vehicles emit no exhaust fumes, they still produce large amounts of tiny pollution particles from brake and tyre dust, for which the government already accepts there is no safe limit.” (Carrington, 2017) Evidence for our response to Question 20. • Carrington, Damian (2017). Electric cars are not the answer to air pollution, says top UK adviser. The Guardian: Aug 4th, 2017. www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/04/fewer-cars-not-electric-cars-beat-airpollution-says-top-uk-adviser-prof-frank-kelly

• We should reduce car parking and car traffic in our historic spaces and provide more room for people walking and cycling. • Fewer cars and more walking and cycling will result in less air pollution, noise, road danger and erosion and damage to our historic buildings and areas. • Reallocating space from roads and cars to walking and cycling will make our cities and villages more accessible and pleasant places to spend time. • Cycling is part of Cambridge culture and is what people expect to see when they come and visit our city and region.

• New developments must follow design standards for high-quality cycling and walking infrastructure that is accessible for people of all ages and abilities. See Parkin (2018) for details. • The design of new developments must be led by a requirement to achieve a fully-permeable, highquality, first-class cycling and walking network, including safe and attractive surroundings, along with direct and convenient public transport routes. • Where new developments or changes touch existing cycle routes, those cycle routes must be protected and must maintain their quality, priority and accessibility. If diverted, the diversion must be of high-quality and fully accessible to people of all abilities throughout the construction process. Any damage to the original cycle route must be fixed once it is reopened. • Cycling infrastructure should be separate from walking facilities. People walking, cycling and driving motor vehicles all have significantly different speeds from each other. Substantial flows of one mode must not be mixed together with the others, because it would be unsatisfactory and unsafe for all modes. • Too many poorly-designed developments are being granted permission (Carmona, 2020). The Local Plan is only as strong as the people who defend its principles. The planning committee and officers must be ready and willing to refuse permission to poorly designed developments. We especially emphasise that the planning authority must challenge car-centric road designs that come from the highway authority and refuse to accept car-dominated plans from the county or Combined Authority. “Designing cycle infrastructure means working on an accessible, sustainable, healthy, habitable and attractive living environment. Consequently, cycle infrastructure is inextricable from its spatial planning and social context.” (CROW, 2017, p. 37) “Cycle infrastructure designed in an integrated fashion will unite the traffic function with the spatial quality and the economic and social potential of cycling. This will enable cycle facilities to go beyond their primary traffic function and have a structuring, enriching effect on their environment in their entirety.” (CROW, 2017, p. 38) “We consider that British local authorities should be encouraged to develop a vision for highly sustainable developments on important sites, similar to European best practice, with thoroughgoing integration of land-use and transport.” (Taylor, 2011) “Generally shared use pedestrian/cycling paths alongside the carriageway are not favoured by either the City Council or the Cambridge Cycling Campaign. The City and County Council Cycling Officers raised objections to the designing in of ‘pavement cycling’, particularly of an inadequate width and requested that the route through the site should be segregated from pedestrians.” (Cambridge City Council, 2009) “Following advice set out in the NPPF (2012 and 2019), over one in five of the audited schemes — those scoring poor and very poor — should have been refused planning permission outright. Given that the national aspiration is for ‘good design’ as ‘a key aspect of sustainable development’, the mediocre projects — over half the audited total — fail the national threshold of schemes likely to prove acceptable to their communities. The design of these schemes should certainly have been improved before relevant permissions were granted.” (Carmona, 2020) Evidence for our response to Question 23. • Parkin, John (2018). Designing for Cycle Traffic. Institute of Civil Engineers Publishing. • CROW (1996–2017). The Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic. CROW-Fietsberaad. Ede, Nederland. • Wheels for Wellbeing (2019). A Guide to Inclusive Cycling. 3rd Edition. • Taylor, Ian and Sloman, Lynn (2011). Thriving cities: integrated land use and transport planning. • Cambridge City Council (2009). Review of the Orchard Park Development and Lessons to be Learnt for Future Major Developments. • Carmona, Matthew, et al (2020). A Housing Design Audit for England. Place Alliance.

• Businesses and industrial spaces need to be connected to the high-quality cycling network, as well as public transport, in order to ensure that people have the opportunity to get to work without driving. • New developments should always include some space for adaptable businesses and light industrial uses, in order to provide employment in the community that is easily accessed on foot or bike, and a healthy mix of activities in new developments. • The Local Plan must not allow car-dependent ‘dormitory estates’ where everyone is forced to travel long distances to access everyday activities like jobs, schools, surgeries and shopping.

• Businesses and industrial spaces need to be connected to the high-quality cycling network, as well as public transport, in order to ensure that people have the opportunity to get to work without driving. • New developments should always include some space for adaptable businesses and light industrial uses, in order to provide employment in the community that is easily accessed on foot or bike, and a healthy mix of activities in new developments. • The Local Plan must not allow car-dependent ‘dormitory estates’ where everyone is forced to travel long distances to access everyday activities like jobs, schools, surgeries and shopping. • Absolutely no employment site should be developed or expanded in any location before sustainable transport links have been established. Cycling, bus and train links must be there before a single employee starts work and forms the habit of driving a car to work. • Planning needs to consider trip-chaining that occurs on the way to work. Are there shops, childcare facilities and places for lunch that are easily accessed by walking and cycling on the way to and during the work day? • Large campus developments without good sustainable transport links can be isolated and leave people stranded if they don’t have a car. Campus transport that focuses on 9–5 workers leaves part-time workers stranded, and offers no opportunity for people who have to leave suddenly in the middle of the day (e.g. for a child’s emergency). “Investment in walking and cycling infrastructure is still needed, but the continued success of walking and cycling environments also depends on the extent to which new and existing residential areas are able to develop a critical mass of destinations (such as workplaces and facilities) within short distances.” (Bertolini, 2003) Evidence for our response to Question 28. • Bertolini, Luca and le Clercq, Frank (2003). Urban development without more mobility by car?. Environment and Planning A 2003, volume 35, pp 575–589.