As I have mentioned before the UK Government is offering some congested cities the opportunity to bid for a £500M Transport Innovation Fund (TIF) in return for those cities instituting traffic demand management through some form of congestion charging, similar the the approach used in London. A Commission has been appointed and are currently gathering evidence through written submissions and presentations. I attended a hearing yesterday in one of Cambridge's "necklace" villages - Sawston. Naturally I cycled to the meeting, arriving just on time, but slightly warm.
I was impressed with the two gentlemen of the Commission, they were both knowledgeable and interested in the motley series of presentations, which ranged from the researched and documented works of some of the Parish Councils through to individuals such as myself. Apparently the record for the number of presentations in a session was broken last night we had 17 during the three hour meeting, which ran from 5pm to 8pm. Of course the Commission will only make a recommendation which the Cambridge Council can ignore and given the recent change in Council members after the local elections this is an unknown.
The session was recorded and they will put the results up on their website, however my simplistic view of the session I attended last night:
- The Bus services were almost universally complained about, both in terms of the poor coverage of routes and timetables and also in terms of reliability and that Cambridge City Council was ineffective in its management of the problems.
- The necklace villages are frequently ignored by the City council in terms of dealing with road layout problems. Girton (a village) has been having a problem with a junction and its lack of cycle friendliness, they have even offered to pay for changes but have been stalled repeatedly.
- Many view cycling as an important factor in improving transport around Cambridge but a universal response was that many people are simply too scared to venture out on the roads, in part because motorists have become dangerously inconsiderate of other road users and pedestrians. (Perhaps I should not have mentioned being knocked of my bike in Histon!)
- By the time I made my presentation we had been asked to cut down to 5 minutes, so I am afraid my views probably came across as a bike-freak complaining about odd cycle lanes, still they do have my written submission as well, which is a little more comprehensive.
It did get me thinking though, there are many, many examples of odd cycle paths around Cambridgeshire and so I though I must try to capture more of them. I started with one on my route home that night. The is a pretty good cycle path along past the Marshall's Airfield. It is a shared use Cycle/Pedestrian path but wide enough that there is not too much conflict. However when it reaches Cherry Hinton - (which has one of the highest concentrations of odd cycle specific constructions in Cambridgeshire), this two-way path narrows to ensure the cyclists can get to know each other as they pass and appears to imply that cyclists going into the village should carry on directly onto the road in to on-coming traffic, shielded by the power of a white line. Here it is, it seems that this road was re-designed at the height of belief in putting kinks and obstructions into the road to slow traffic down. I think it was designed by someone who was on a bonus for the number of wiggle bits he/she could add and hang the consequences. The island in the middle helps to narrow the road and "slow" cars down, actually it causes a pinch point for any road users other than cars and woe betide them if they delay the might motorist.
I have annotated this one with the supposed cycle traffic floes, as the road is also on a bend it is quite difficult to see if there is any traffic coming when you cross the road (green direction). Despite the predilection for huge numbers of road markings around cycle paths there are none here. Perhaps the budget ran out with all the other bits and pieces?
I sometimes swing around onto the grass to position myself or a little further up the road cross near a roundabout.
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