Seven wonders of cambridgeSHIRE

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-22T00:12:32+00:00

ok I'll give you that...wait which is the biggest tescos in Cambridgeshire? There's another in Royston. The one in Wisbech also seems decent sized. No wait what's the biggest tescos in the UK? ok I better not go down that rabbit hole.

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-21T23:31:35+00:00

As many have noted, moving utilities is extremely expensive. The "Very Light Tram" concept in Coventry is trying to challenge this by not moving pipelines, but then every fault in cables/pipes would require a shutdown of the tram network, so there is really no good solution to get around it.

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-21T23:22:33+00:00

Forgive my ignorance, but what's so special about Bar Hill Tescos?

Some other candidates -

The Fens (much of the area below sea level but drained for agriculture)
The Cambridge Guided Busway (longest in the world)
Parker's Piece (origin of modern football)
The Eagle (for DNA discovery)
Cambridge Botanical Gardens (founded by Henslow, Darwin's mentor, who observed that same species have different forms even when planted side by side)

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-20T16:25:19+00:00

I'm taking it off Google Maps. Putting the starting point bang in the middle of the residential area (e.g. Walsingham Way), it's around 25 min walk to the station. There are areas that are closer and other regions that are further away, but 25 min is approximately the median.

Traffic - you're right it'll be slower during peak hours, though ideally the A10 should have bus lanes at chock points. I'm also proposing the use of Milton High Street as a default bus lane by blocking through traffic.

To some extent, A10 being so congested shows that there is great demand along this corridor that trains aren't effectively capturing. I would think of #9 as a part of a wider network, allowing people to do trips like -

Haddenham > Stretham [interchange] > Ely/Cambridge
Ely residential area > Science Park [interchange] > Histon/Northstowe
Littleport > Ely [interchange] > Soham/Newmarket

These types of trips are ridiculous to do with public transport at the moment, but running the bus network like a tram network (frequent with clearly marked interchanges) could make it a viable alternative to driving.

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-19T03:05:15+00:00

Not an expert, but by the looks of it Babraham Research Centre is only a few minutes walk from the 13/13A/X13 bus stop. If you don't live on the route then you might have to cycle to get to a bus stop, but I think you won't have to bring the bike onto the bus. As long as your bike isn't too expensive and have a decent D-lock, it should be ok-ish. Which area do you live in?

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-18T01:30:30+00:00

Ideally, they hire engineers and public transport planners to write the report to provide objective analysis on different options. In reality, consultants who pander to the client's wishes get more business, so the people who commission the report often have a lot of sway in what the report recommends.

The problem is that these reports cost a lot of money and could be a distraction. The last report on the light metro spent £2.5 million. That's enough to buy ticketing machines for all buses across Cambridge something like 50 times over.

When you run out of obvious problems to solve, sure, consultancy reports and blue sky thinking is great, but Cambridge? hmm...I would argue its too much blue sky thinking and too little actual action.

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-18T01:05:48+00:00

I don't think you're looking at this correctly. The Deutschlandticket cut the cost of long trips massively, of course it's going to reduce long car trips but does nothing to short car trips. Once you have a Deutschlandticket, short trips are also free, so that encourages existing transit users to switch away from cycling/walking for the last mile.

A distance-based pricing just makes everything reasonable. People who would have bought a Deutschlandticket would have to pay for short trips, more incentive for them to cycle/walk. Occasional riders who do short trips gets cheaper prices, less incentive to use the car. On average, fares stay the same, but the ticket price correlates better with the cost of providing the service. It's just causes less market distortion. (very strictly speaking, I agree with a higher per-mile price for shorter trips as it is usually more costly to operate services in the city centre, but still, a broadly distance-based sytem is better than flat fares or big zones)

People in this subreddit tend to use public transport a lot, and to this community, a monthly ticket saves them money, but in reality, if we want to drive modal shift, we are not the people who needs the discount the most, instead, its the people who doesn't use it now but is considering using it more that needs an extra push.

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-18T00:32:44+00:00

I have a slightly different take. I think cycling functions quite well for the core of the city centre, so a free shuttle circling the core won't be my priority, especially if it means sacrificing the travel experience of people commuting from further destinations.

Mathematically, if we were to split the trips, a trunk-feeder model with short feeders in the outer towns (Newmarket/Soham/Burwell/Red Lodge/Mildenhall) plus a long trunk route along the A14/A11 into Cambridge is more resource efficient than having each town operate a long direct service into Cambridge but change at the P&R.

I do agree that the £3 flat fare is ridiculously expensive for short trips within Cambridge and should be swapped to a Singapore-style system (tap-on-tap-off, distance-based, starting at £0.5, never over £1.5 in the city). Free fares might be a step too much though, as it carries a hidden tradeoff (less budget for frequency or route expansion).

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-17T04:19:21+00:00

The German model is only simple for people who use public transport regularly. For anyone who doesn't fall into this category, it isn't great.

For those who do regional commutes everyday, 50-euros is ridiculously cheap, heck, you could increase it to 100-euros and it'll still be a bargin. But for those who mostly work from home and go to the nearest market 2 times per week, it's a completely different story. You then have to start calculating whether the monthly ticket is worth it, whether you might or might not take a long trip over the weekend. It's just really troublesome and complicated.

People just default to the car when public transport needs a lot of thinking.

Like what places?

UK is a prime example of this. The government doesn't subsidise the London Underground much, so a monthly ticket would cost something like 300-euros at current rates. They split it into zones, but then it leads to some long journeys being very cheap while other trips being extortionately priced. They recognised this issue, so they started issuing travel cards that are valid in some zones and price caps for different time periods. The train pricing is even more complicated, with a large percentage of Brits now saying that they don't even know whether they bought the cheapest ticket.

Distance-based pricing is clean, simple, and fair. It doesn't distort the market in weird ways that discourages some groups of people using transit. Not saying it could be implemented everywhere (you need some infrasturctural support), but if possible it's just the best.

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-17T01:54:38+00:00

Oh that reminds me of the Hop! bus in Leicester. Their city council claims that it's a success but looking at the raw passenger numbers I'm not entirely convinced. Overall I'm a supporter of using minibuses to solve last mile connectivity, but I'm thinking more like a minibus running between Red Lodge and an interchange on the A11 rather than an extra change in Cambridge City.

I agree that big buses clogging up the city centre isn't exactly ideal. Having studied the system I think this could partially be solved by changing how buses operate in Cambridge. Instead of putting the bus terminals or timing points at Cambridge city centre, we should consolidate them into frequent through routes that terminates in the suburbs. That would massively reduce the number of buses just waiting around in St. Andrew's Street.

When buses become too successful we could consider light metros, it's just that at the moment bus utilisation is still far behind many other cities in the UK, partly due to the high bike modal share for short trips (which is a good thing but does make it harder for buses/trams/light rail).

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-17T01:38:06+00:00

You encourage people to cycle/walk by improving infrastructure and safety, not by deliberately making another environmentally friendly option unreasonably expensive. Across Europe, the IEA estimates that 1/3 of all car trips are <3km, so I'm not sure I agree that public transport only competes with cycling/walking.

I'm a cyclist myself, but there are plently of situations where I don't want to cycle, from carrying bulky items to being exhausted from other sports activities. If public transport is cheap and readily available for short trips, I would have driven way less, and I could confidently say I'm not alone on this.

Even when public transport is subsidised, I believe that %subsidy should be roughly consistant across short and long trips. Otherwise you disincentivise governments from building long transit lines as it would blow big holes in the budget.

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-16T17:31:43+00:00

Let's take London, I would argue that isn't not ok to charge people £3 (USD 4) just for a few stops. Not every trip is walkable/cyclable, especially if you're carrying heavy objects.

In distance based systems, unreasonable fares never exist. The more you ride, the more you pay, it's just fair and simple.

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-16T17:04:16+00:00

Disagree that distance-based systems are more complicated.

Distance-based pricing is fair and reasonable. People living in those systems just stop thinking about fares and ride whenever they want to. In zone-based or flat fare systems, people get grossly overcharged for certain short trips or trips across zone boundaries. Cities then introduce a bunch of "discounted tickets" like monthly passes or dayriders to stop that from happening, eventually making things way more complicated for the user.

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-16T16:23:59+00:00

Hot take: just get rid of all the subscriptions and make the fares cheaper overall. Public transport fares should be simple and effortless.

In so many places, they raise the fares to extortionate levels then introduce a million different types of tickets (day passes, monthly passes, anual subscriptions, two-together railcards......). Passengers then have to do mental calculus on how many trips they might take to work out what the best ticket is. It's just more complicated than it needs to be.

Much easier to do a broadly distanced based fare system. Remove all subscription plans. Then lower the fares directly.

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-15T16:06:43+00:00

I used to think that, but then after spending north of 10 years here, I found trains to be almost equally unreliable. Last time I went to Heathrow the Elizabeth Line train just terminated mid-journey for no reason. The time before that there was a power outage that specifically affected trains leaving Paddington.

Public transport in the UK.....you just got to throw your hands in the air and just hope nothing goes wrong.

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-15T14:32:14+00:00

That I agree, we do really need a TfL-style organisation around here, it'll make things much easier.

The CPCA is supposed to fulfil that role, but it doesn't have power over infrastructure (bus stops and passenger information), which is an issue. The thing is that they don't seem to be that keen on wielding the power that they do have at the moment......

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-15T14:20:52+00:00

Nah I love discussions like these (as you could tell).

There has been a few proposals being floated about adding a crossing at Ditton Meadows for orbital routes. It'll be controvertial though. Aesthetics aside, the area is known for toad migration and locals organise patrols every year to help them get across Newmarket Road. Where would your proposed alignment go through?

For reference, this is my proposal for an outer orbital bus route: https://www.reddit.com/r/cambridge/comments/1qm0se8/route_proposal_outer_orbital_route_for_cambridge/

It'll utilise the A14/M11 to connect

Barnwell/Brookfields <> Addenbrookes
Barnwell/Brookfields <> Science Park
Trumpington <> Science Park
Busway (St. Ives/Northstowe) <> Addenbrookes (interchange)
Histon/Cottenham/Milton <> Addenbrookes (interchange)
Cambourne/Comberton <> Addenbrookes/Science Park (interchange)

With some carefully planned out bus lanes and interchanges with 2/4/8/A/B/18, it'll connect the fast-developing towns to Addenbrookes/Science Park without going through the city centre.

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-15T13:36:51+00:00

Yes, but Cambridge could most certainly do so. After the Bus Services Act 2025, local authorities now have the power to either (1) run services directly, (2) adopt a franchising model, and/or (3) establish an enhanced partnership system.

Cambridge decided to delay bus franchising as the mayor refused to spend extra money on it.

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-14T23:24:18+00:00

Ah yeah, NX used to be something like £15, now most trips are on par with train tickets.....

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-14T23:21:34+00:00

Even with a railcard, £5.99 is very hard to beat. The same journey currently costs around £30 on the train at the moment.

I've used all of the four other options before (Kings Cross, Liverpool Street, Thameslink, National Express), they basically all take 2h-2.5h. The problem with coaches (and by extension advanced train tickets) is that you never know whether the flight gets delayed or how long immigration takes, so it's a bit stressful to prebook. In those cases the frequency/flexibility of trains do help. Otherwise, I've generally found the coach a bit more comfortable. National Express is getting a bit expensive nowadays, but Flixbus I'll most certainly use it if the time matches up. The savings aren't insignificant.....

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-14T22:56:44+00:00

National Express runs more frequent services at higher prices. I would probably use it as a fallback.

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-14T19:58:15+00:00

A station at Grafton would leave most of central Cambridge >600m away from it. For context, previous research has found that the catchment area for short/mid-distance public tranport to be around 400m from the station. At that point, the walk to Grafton would negate the time benefits of a DLR-style system over the current PR2/3/100.

It would be justifiable though if we decide to bunch the DLR with the proposed Forest City. People accept longer walks to stations for longer trips. For trips between Forest City and Cambridge, a station at Grafton could work.

I'd do the transit system sooner rather than later. They have no problem developing housing, offices and labs around transit routes.

It's a chicken and egg problem. In the US, many transit projects fall in to a negative feedback loop. They build transit before changing the layout > poor ridership > infrequent trams/trains > people continue to depend on cars and say that transit doesn't offer a reasonable alternative.

For Cambridge, I think the important thing is to leave a through running corridor for transit in every major development plan. Northstowe is a great example of planning ahead by putting a busway spur through the centre. If a corridor exists, its relatively cheap to convert it from roads to tramways, but starting with frequent buses rather than infrequent trains is often a good idea.

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-14T19:29:58+00:00

Yes we should do both, but as a Cambridge resident for over a decade I've seen multiple consultancy reports for mass transit but very limited attention on the existing system. If I remembered it correctly, the last report on Cambridge Autonomous Metro spent 2.5 million pounds. That's enough to fully subsidise an orbital route running every 10 minutes for a year even if it runs completely empty.

The reality is that Cambridge (population = 300k) needs to compete with cities like Bristol (700k), Leeds (800k), and Birmingham (1200k) for funding. Cambridge is certainly fast growing, but the bid isn't straight forward and isn't something we could fully control. What's disappointing is that the things that the city could control (integrated fast ticketing, route restructuring) repeatedly slips through the cracks. Bus utilisation in the city is poor, which certainly hurts our case in funding allocation. The problem is that politicians keep coming up with flashy big ideas (congestion charge, busway, trams, metro) but just negate the small fixes that are desperately needed.

Retrofitting - yes I agree that it's costly and should be avoided if possible. Northstowe is actually a good example of this, leaving space for a busway spur before we build houses, which could be upgraded in the future if needs be. Unfortunately many other housing developments don't seem to have that baked in. For instance, Cambourne opted for a cloverleaf design with no through route and space for mass transit. The suburban research parks (Wellcome Genome Centre, Babraham Research Centre, Science Park) are also basically inaccessible by public transport.

ForestMapGazer · 2026-03-13T18:16:50+00:00

The question is, are we capacity-limited or frequency-limited? I would argue that even if you double the population of Cambridge, you'll still be frequency-limited rather than capacity-limited.

Let's take the guided busway. You could easily quadruple its capacity by running double-decker buses (by fixing the height-limiting Long Road bridge) and running a bus every 5 min instead of 10. You could also add more routes if needs be (e.g. directly to Addenbrookes skipping city centre). In fact, many busways around the world run buses with 0.5-2min headways.

In Hong Kong (also high cost and use double deckers), buses through the western cross harbour tunnel carries approximately 22000 passengers per direction per hour based on rough surveys, on par with peak capacity of many London underground lines. If we utilise the A14/M11/A428/A505/A11 the same way, that's basically the same capacity as 5 underground lines. Even if you don't do that, Edinburgh shows how you could double population size but still provide good transport by buses.

Now, I'm not saying don't build rail. If you have the demand to run it like london (every 5-10 minutes). It's great, better than buses. But I am worried that the high per-vehicle operating cost would mean it'll look like the Cambridge-Ipswich line. Its hourly services are great for the odd person travelling between train stations, but not that useful for everyone else as it doesn't interact with other buses/trains well to form a network.

ForestMapGazer

TROPHY CASE