02 BUS RAPID TRANSITSUPPLEMENT Bob Menzies


Head of Delivery, Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, Cambridgeshire County Council


Chris Poultney


Project Manager, Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, Cambridgeshire County Council


Cambridgeshire deliver a true BRT experience for passengers


The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway opened on 7 August 2011 and has proved to be an instant success. By 7 October 2011, 433,000 journeys had been made on the Busway, substantially above forecast.


The Busway provides a reliable, fast and frequent service and is a genuine public transport alternative to the notoriously congested A14 dual carriageway. The Busway forms an essential part of the transport infrastructure for one of the fastest growing counties in the UK. The Busway has been delivered by


Cambridgeshire County Council, who are the local transport authority, working in close partnership with the private sector bus companies. The development of the Busway was driven


by three key interlinked issues; coping with the pressures of growth in the Cambridge area, the Cambridge Transport Strategy, and con - gestion on the A14 trunk road.


Eurotransport Volume 9, Issue 6, 2011


Cambridgeshire has been one of the fastest


growing parts of the UK for the last three decades. The focus of this growth remains the Cambridge Science Park, but the success of the Science Park has spread to numerous other business parks and specialist research and development centres. This has led to tremendous pressures on both housing provision and transport networks. To address these pressures the County Council developed the Cambridgeshire Structure Plan, which brought together land use and transport planning. The outcome of the plan was a radical


change from previous planning policies, with growth now concentrated in three areas; specifically around the fringes of Cambridge, in


the existing market towns in the County such as St Ives and Huntingdon, and in a new town. This strategy ensures that new housing is developed in easy reach of employment locations and important amenities. As well as reducing the need to travel, this also ensures that settlements are large enough to sustain high quality public transport links between them. Crucial to this strategy was the selection of the site for the new town. The site chosen was a former air force base midway between Cambridge and St Ives adjacent to the planned route of the Busway. The new town, to be called Northstowe, will ultimately have 10,000 houses making it comparable in size to existing towns such as St Ives. The County Council has been pursuing the


Cambridge Transport Strategy since the late 1980s and has succeeded in stabilising traffic flows in Cambridge despite the growth


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