The Cambridge And St. Ives Railway Organisation

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For clarity not all railway lines are shown.

What is this about?

Work started on the scheme in February 2007 and it is claimed that buses will begin running early in the second quarter of 2009 now reported that, as predicted by most non-Council observers, the guideway will not open until at least 12 months late. The Council said it would definitely be open by "late-summer 2009". The latest estimates are not just late-summer, but end-of-autumn (very end of November) some unspecified time in 2010 or 2011 after a lengthy court battle with the contractors. As such, the Council is no longer willing to give opening dates. Recent (March 2010) council reports states that legal action is inevitable and suggests it might not be resolved until 2014/2015 (though the busway must be handed over to the council prior to them starting legal proceedings).

What is a guided bus?

Buses are fitted with small guidewheels on the front which enable them to run in a concrete trough. This allows vehicles to pass closely and so, if running in a town centre, means that the busways take up significantly less room compared with conventional bus lanes. The buses are standard vehicles that still require a driver; the only difference is that the guideway does the steering (the driver controls everything else as usual). When not on the guideway, the buses are no different from a normal bus.

In the Cambridgeshire scheme, the buses will ONLY be guided in the uncongested open country section between Milton Road, Cambridge and the outskirts of St. Ives (plus south of Cambridge Station to Trumpington and Addenbrookes). They will be unguided in (and between) Huntingdon and St. Ives and, crucially, they will be unguided within Cambridge itself, where there is no room for guideways on the narrow streets. This completely defeats the object of guiding the buses in the first place, compared with conventional buses on ordinary roads with bus priority measures.

How do the bus and rail compare?

• CAST.IRON has fully-costed, independently scrutinised plans supporting its figures
• The guideway cost was initially £54m, £65m, then £78m, then £86m, finally smashing the £100m mark to rest at £116m (March 2007). It is reported (Oct 09) that the final cost will be near £150m. The council's own recent figures show a cost of £161m (Feb 2010). The headline figure of £86.4m was stated widely (Listen to a radio interview) by the promoters at the time and it was this figure that was submitted to public enquiry. The councillor currently in charge of the project has attempted to re-write history by claiming the original estimate was £116.27m.
• There were 2700 objections to the busway sent to the Secretary of State for Transport, plus nearly 4000 signatures on our petition
• Four people wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport in favour
• Many of the 'selling points' of the Guided Bus have been quietly dropped as the building costs increased and the project overran. e.g. 'kiss-and-ride' facility at Swavesey, through running to Hinchingbrooke Hospital, cross-operator ticketing

So why are we getting the guided bus and not a railway?

"While stated preference surveys tend to indicate a strong preference for light rail above other modes, the PTE Group felt that it would be difficult to obtain meaningful market research data until there are more extensive bus-based systems. The establishment of a number of demonstration projects would enable the actual performance of alternative forms of transport in service to be measured, and would enable the costs and abilities to alter travel habits to be compared with existing light rail schemes."

This was closely followed by CHUMMS (Cambridge-HUntingdon MultiModal Study), which presented 4 transport "packages" between Cambridge and Huntingdon. Three of them replaced the railway with a guided bus; only the fourth featured rail, but this package combined rail with a politically unacceptable road option. Ironically, given the current cost of the guided bus, this package was also rejected because the CHUMMS estimate of the rail element was considered to be excessive at £109m!

It became clear soon after CAST.IRON was formed that a great deal of work and political capital had already been invested in the guided bus project. The council was divided on clear party lines with the majority Conservative group behind the scheme from the beginning whilst the Liberal Democrats (the next biggest group) were consistently against. The small Labour group eventually fell in with the Conservatives despite their City Council colleagues formally objecting to the scheme.

At the deciding meeting of the full County Council in July 2006, a number of members who had taken part in the debate left before the final vote. As a result, only a minority of the members put their names to the scheme, even though it is the biggest single project ever undertaken by the council and therefore the most important decision likely to be taken during their terms of office.

So why is CAST.IRON still here?

Once buses start running (scheduled for Spring 2009 towards the end of 2009), we will monitor the actual success of the scheme and compare it to the glowing reports of patronage and journey times which will, no doubt, be produced by the Council's PR machine.

CAST.IRON Contact Details Please note our revised contact details. There is no longer an office at Newmarket Road, Cambridge, which is occupied by a private family unconnected to CAST.IRON. Please do NOT call or hand deliver post to that address.