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I've been meaning to post about this for ages - Cambridge County Council has decided it wants to build a guided bus system to provide transport into Cambridge from St Ives and ultimately Huntingdon. However the scheme seems to be completely farcical as the buses will have to run on the roads when they get into the city. Not only that but the scheme will destroy a viable rail trackbed to provide the guided route for the buses thus removing the possibility of building a rail system that could be far faster and cheaper.
There is a proposal to build such a scheme - it's called cast.iron, but of course it's very hard to judge whether it really is viable. The council are spinning their mad scheme for all it's worth, and the only other people who've gone into the matter in depth are cast.iron themselves. I've tried to follow the discussions on cam.misc and cam.transport, but there's really only so much time I can devote to trying to work out where the truth lies on the enormous number of areas the schemes have an impact on.
All I can say is that I can't believe the Guided Bus scheme is sensible - it seems to be a combination of a vanity project for the council, and the fact that central Government will put money up for this, but nothing else. I'm going to write to object to the scheme - not because I'm necessarily in favour of cast.iron but simply so the matter can be debated more fully at a public enquiry.
Posted by MFreestone at March 18, 2004 09:21 PM