Cambridge's Success - A Blessing or a Curse?

I came into work early this morning in order to crack on with some outstanding work... but now feel I need to get this quick rant/post off my chest first before I do!

Basically then, it's to do with the (Greater) Cambridge City Deal. I heard this morning that some form of protest is taking place later today in opposition to Council plans to shut down various city roads at different times to help address the traffic problem.

Now, the reason I want to rant is not because I disagree - or agree - with these protesters. It seems quite illogical to me that if you want to help protect trade in our dying town and city centres, the first thing you do is make it difficult for workers to get to work, goods deliverers to deliver and shoppers to shop. That said, a successful, and ever-growing, place like Cambridge needs to try and do something about its already serious transport problems otherwise things will get (far) worse. (And that, indeed, is what the City Deal purports to do.)

So, where is the rant?

Well, it just got me thinking about Europe. Yes, looking across to the continent for potential solutions to our problems doesn't seem to be very popular right now it's true, but I was thinking about both what radical plans some cities there employ to address the similar problems Cambridge has, and also, what cultural differences exist alongside them that help enable those solutions to be genuinely successful.

And I'm thinking about Belgium. Yes, that small, divided, country with two languages (three actually), an EU Parliament, and an alleged obsession with chocolate, lace, chips and (really, let's be honest, the best) beer.

When some small towns over there start to develop similar traffic issues that Cambridge is experiencing, I believe they have two distinct advantages.

1. They (tend to) have powerful, decision-making, local mayors.
2. They have a different approach to when to do business.

Regarding the first point, this is something we are slowly beginning to understand and take on board in the UK. The powers of The Mayor of London (the real one that is, rather than the one that wears a silly hat) are now seen as helpful and aiding decentralisation of Government, so proposals are popping up everywhere for other similar roles to be made for other large UK cities... and, indeed, wider areas. Will the, rather bizarre, plan for a directly elected Mayor of East Anglia be successful? Who knows. Either way, it doesn't appear that powerful roles for administering smaller cities (on their own) seems to be on the agenda yet.

And regarding the second point, this is where I feel there is an issue then, and a need to rant...

To address this then, I want to ask a couple of questions first.

Why does Cambridge have a traffic issue? 

Well, because it is ever-successful, but at the same time constrained by geography and history. You can't knock down its old buildings to widen roads! (Well, you can... but there are limits!)

Where are commuters heading? 

Cambridge has thousands of people heading into - or through - the town every morning in order to get to their place of work. Commuters heading to the train and bus stations in order to go beyond the city, students wanting to get to class, lecturers wanting to beat them there in order to teach them, scientists, researchers, regular business workers and so on. And, of course, this is the pretty much the same thing that happens in every town, wherever you go...

But it also has shop workers trying to get into work to set up shop (of course) and deal with the goods deliveries that (need to) take place ahead of opening time. Again, the same as in other UK cities... but not necessarily Belgium.

Shopaholics

In the UK, we are used to Sunday being a rest day, and down-town shops usually opening between the hours of 9am and 5pm every week day and Saturday. But in Belgium (and many other European countries), you sometimes find shops closing on a Monday or Tuesday, and not Sunday (despite an arguably more influential Church). You also find shops open well into the evening on most days, but not necessarily during the morning.

Why? Well there are different local laws in different cities (see Point 1!), but generally speaking it's because there is an acknowledgement that having everyone (try and) do the same thing at the same time not only creates traffic congestion, but it also also prevents good, strategic, business from taking place. As I see it, shops that can afford to be closed at 10 am in the morning clearly have a decent financial strategy... or at least, a balanced one.

Long story short, I believe we need to tackle the current mindset we have in the UK... or Cambridge at least. Shops should be allowed to open before 9am... and/or after 5pm. In Cambridge, we do have late closing on Wednesdays now, and that's good, but that just makes the working week longer. Those shops closing at 7pm, etc. should also be opening at 11am in order to give their workers the same working conditions that other office workers have. Also, having your workers work longer means the pressure is on to make a greater profit in order to then pay them (and address the other overheads). It needn't be that way... (shock-horror!) making extra profit isn't everything*.

Different frogs, Different times

So, if we have office workers going to their office for 9, but shop workers going to their shops for 11, we stagger the impact of the daily commute and resulting traffic on our city's transport infrastructure. Do you really need to widen roads that remain empty half the day?

Also, imagine finishing work on a weekday at 5 and being able to then do some clothes shopping in town before you head home! No need to bunch everything together for one mammoth shopping operation on the Saturday... when everyone else is thinking - and trying to do - the same thing.

Walk, bike, bus, car, train...

For me, very little that takes place in Cambridge over the next few years to help address its transport problems will have the genuine impact that helps all. Doing something will have a positive impact somewhere for sure, and it may even help a certain section of the community or a set of businesses... but what it will also likely do is upset others at the same time, or prevent some other option from doing better.

Today's planned march seems to illustrate that point well.

But I am also thinking of the Busway as I type this, too. I won't go into detail here, but the fact the Busway is now well used (and perhaps even admired by some) doesn't mean we should then forget about what could have been...

And now we hear of plans for a new Busway for Cambridge! One that takes out countryside this time (rather than a pre-existing railway track), and all for trying to, admirable though it is, remove the car from the transport equation.

Anyway, whilst my desire for there to be an orbital underground railway with spurs linking existing out-of-town Park and Ride sites in Cambridge seems fanciful and extortionate, it is worth noting that all the other transport "solutions" still cost a lot of money**... and a lot of that money ends up in feasibility studies and legal disputes rather than in actual construction.

Right, rant over: I wanted this to be short. Back to work!

Cheers,
ZeeOx

*You may disagree... but I am not trying to be a Communist here! Radical growth and profit that cannot be sustained usually results in failure, long term. That is boom and bust economics in a nutshell.

**Money in terms of budget... and money in terms of lost revenue to those businesses negatively impacted by the new operations.

Cambridge... a Progressive City?

So, 'Cambridge' has finally released plans for its second railway station.

(http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/First-plans-for-Chesterton-rail-station-unveiled-12062012.htm) Long overdue you might say, and a 'win-win' bit of PR for 'green' public transport.

Or is it?....

Here's the thing: Cambridge's continued - and now trend-bucking (is that a term?) - economic success lies firmly at the feet at having one of the world's best Universities... and an associated hi-tech industry that has grown up as a consequence of it.

If it weren't for that, it would simply be a relatively quiet market town, with narrow, busy roads, an under-supported professional football team and highly canalised river that occasionally floods its banks because it sits on the edge of the flattest land in the country... 

The Science Park, tucked away just south of the bypass in the the north of the city, was the very first in a now numerous collection of local business parks that are collectively known as 'The Silicon Fen'. It allowed University Research Centres and private businesses specialising in technology to come together in one place and provide mutual benefit for all. 

The pleasently landscaped, but now full, park supports many jobs and, until the opening of the nearby Busway, relied upon the A14 as its main point of access.     

And so... we come back to the question at the top of this blog entry.

For a city with the Number Six University in the World*, and a proven track record of creating the most innovative and successful IT companies on the cutting edge of technology in the UK, we finally see a City Council responding to basic infrastructural needs. 

There has been talk of a new railway station in the suburb of Chesterton for many years... and its only now, once the Science Park has 'settled in' and there are no new significant developments on either side of the neighbouring Milton Road, that the plans have been put down and cash found.

'Better late than never' I hear you say!

Perhaps... but what Cambridge needs RIGHT NOW is a new station in the SOUTH of the city!

In the area around Addenbrookes Hospital (itself a large hospital of International repute and recently both enlarged and provided with new access roads) even more building work is taking place.

In the next few years, over 3000 homes and associated businesses, schools, etc are going to be built on fields surrounding the hospital, and the nearby suburb of Trumpington. These developments (Great Kneighton  and Trumpington Meadows) will put an enormous amount of pressure on the roads leading into the City from the south.

This pressure will arguably be far greater than what the Science Park ever brought on its completion.

Once we have a new station in the south, serving a new community 'under construction', we can then worry about the one for Chesterton.

A new Development Plan for taking the Science Park and surrounding Chesterton Sidings/Cowley Road area into the next phase of its history can then be produced - with thought, care and less haste.

This can, and should, include a new railway station of course - but perhaps also some form of solution (finally!) for the entire Brownfield site of the Chesterton Sidings. Otherwise, they will remain, at least for a while yet, completely overgrown and dormant - until someone conjures up a solution for the legacy of the Lafarge Aggregates site and the nearby Sewage Works.

If new housing can be built, I would propose that there are NO new car park spaces - at either the station or the houses themselves. People can use the railway and busway to commute/travel about - and things like extra investment in hi-speed optical fibre broadband, or carbon-neutral housing materials and energy efficient heating and electricity can be employed in the housing itself, to entice people to live there instead. If people have no choice - they will still come... because this is Cambridge! And this will then be a Showpiece for Urban Living, not a piecemeal compromise that, literally, fills a gap.

I hate looking at cheap and cheerful development plans, even - or especially - if they are for public transport solutions.

This is 2012 not 1985. And Cambridge not Corby. And I mean no disrespect to Corby there.

Cheers.

*source:Times Higher Education

Which side of the fence to choose...

So then... first up:
The UK Government has just released news of new planning guidelines for England that they think will reform an overly-bureaucratic existing system and accommodate the urgent need for new homes, whilst protecting the countryside.
Check http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17514730  for the BBC news release and http://www.communities.gov.uk/corporate/ for the official info.
Where do I stand on this?
As someone who fell in love with the (alleged) original concept of the (modern) UK Green Belt system, my thoughts on the matter have changed over the years. Like the Government, I can no longer support it in its current form. The simple facts are that: (1) the UK is a small island with over 60 million people on it, and has a large capital city that over overly dominates the economy, transport, politics... and geography of the country it rules; (2) we have no real wild countryside* left and that all land and its inhabitants, be them human or otherwise, must be continuously managed in some way for a balance to be attempted/achieved; (3) The population is growing. Not, fortunately, as bad as the developing world, but enough to warrant an upcoming programme of new housing construction that will put pressure on the entire country's infrastructure.
*bar a few, dying, 'alpine' mountain tops in the Cairngorms.
And so... what to do?
The true nature of much of the UK's 14 green belt areas is that they are not green. They are dominated by monocultural crop fields, where fertilizer and insecticide is heavily used and supplemented by significant water irrigation sytems, and sustain little in the way of 'breathing space' for the cities they surround - either in the way of wildlife reserves of sports and recreation facilities.
We could build on much of these sites and not feel that we have 'hurt' the countryside, and so the Government is right to say that the middle of many of our towns and cities - where most of us live and work - are being picked to death by new developments that take over the little greenspace that remains in our urban areas.
However, as much as urban densification can be a bad thing, there are still many brownfield sites in the UK that are untouched. They are purely and simply being bought and sold for the profit game. It is better for some so-called developers to play the buy/sell game rather than actually start building. Also: by building outside our cities in green belts, even if it means creating more true green space in the form of parkland and pocket nature reserves as a result, it also puts pressure on transport.
If we are still commuting into these cities, our road and rail systems continue to suffer.
I am going to stop here for now - this is not supposed to be a mini-essay... but I will close by saying that I think the key to future UK development is providing more smaller, affordable homes in central city locations, not providing underground car parking or 'one parking space per unit' schemes in middle income urban housing developments and concentaring on high-speed Internet connections for out-of-town projects (whatever they may be) so that people are encouraged to work from home more. Then... we won't have such a need to overspill into our South-Eastern green belts specifically and continue the status quo of one half of the country dominating the other. If we can do this, we won't need to build on green belt land at all - leaving it to be properly converted back intro true green space, providing 'wildife corridors', where are threatened flora and fauna can be given a chance to re-colonise.
What would be so bad about living in the north if your house was carbon neutral in construction, a 'Passivhaus' in usage, had a view of true green Dales and Hills... and had BroadBand so good that you didn't need to commute to the City of London to join in on that all-important Video Conference to that client in Dubai?        
TTFN, Zeeox