Draft North East Cambridge Area Action Plan
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We welcome the fact that the new area is being designed around walking and cycling. However, we share the concerns raised by the Cambridge Cycling Campaign around the ability of the planning service to ensure consistent quality of routes and facilities across a site which encompasses several different landowners and developers. The use of phrases such as ‘where possible’ in describing the planned cycling provision provides loopholes which means vital elements such as adequate cycle parking and priority for active travel modes on streets and roads may not be delivered. We also have concerns about how journeys will link up with the wider area. Providing connections to existing routes is a vital step but not sufficient in itself. Many pedestrian paths and cycle paths/lanes around the city, but particularly on Milton Road are in poor repair, badly designed and fundamentally inadequate, even at current levels of use. With particular importance to this development, the cycling provision down Milton Road into the city centre needs to be redesigned and improved as it is currently inadequate and unsafe. Immediate action to reduce traffic levels in the north of the city is needed to enable high levels of walking and cycling before, during, and after development. Cycling provision must be dramatically improved to provide a better mode of transport into and around the city, as set out by the Cambridge Cycling Campaign https://www.camcycle.org.uk/cycling2020/.
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We note that, despite the stated aim of helping to address housing demand in Cambridge, that the proposed development will actually bring a net increase in demand.
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(comment 2 of 2) Green Party policy encourages community involvement in food growing, for example allotments and community orchards. The plans for North East Cambridge do not appear to provide much opportunity for residents to grow food. If food growing would be unsafe because of the site’s history as a sewage treatment works, this should be made clear.
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We welcome the stated aims of reducing the need to travel and making active and sustainable modes of transport the norm while ensuring the needs of all members of society are met. The aspiration of no additional car journeys on Milton Road is laudable, but the plans are not robust enough to make this a reality. At a rate of one parking space per two dwellings, this development will add 4000 cars to our already overcrowded local roads. Milton Road already suffers from congestion at almost all times of day, and a slew of developments (including A14 and A10 upgrades, Northstowe, Waterbeach, the various Cambridge developments) are set to make this worse. Policy 22 states that “appropriate space for [...] car pool hire scheme vehicles” will be incorporated into parking provision. We call for a greater emphasis on such schemes and a more ambitious reduction in private car ownership. The consultation mentions the existing “good public transport links” to North East Cambridge. It will be necessary to continue to invest in services such as the Guided Busway and Cambridge North Station and increase their capacity as needed to keep pace with demand. Requiring additional Park & Ride capacity simply pushes additional car journeys into the surrounding areas. We echo concerns raised by Cambridge Cycling Campaign that trip budgets rely heavily on external schemes such as the Milton Road ‘bus improvements’ and CAM network, neither of which will be completed by the deadlines quoted in the document. If services such as transport links, cycle hire and car clubs are not in place before residents move in, car dependency becomes locked in. Care must also be taken to maintain high-quality walking and cycling access throughout the different periods of construction, including to any ‘meanwhile projects’ on the site or in surrounding communities.
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