Tories Won't Face Residents

For the second time one of the Conservative County Councillor's responsible for decisions that affect King's Hedges has refused to attend meetings open to the public in Cambridge.

The County Cabinet member for transport, Tory Matt Bradney and aleading officer have turned down the opportunity to answer questionsat the city's North Area Committee on March 19.

In part this is because they would have been challenged by residents on the decision not to allowthe bus to stop on Histon Road and Milton Road so that "it canprovide a fast reliable service with only limited stops" forpassengers living along the A14 corridor.

The only option for residents is to ask Councillor's to take questions to the closed County meetings.

This follows Tory Martin Curtis' refusal to answer questions on cuts to provision for vulnerable children in Cambridge.

Guided busway meeting Thursday

The next meeting of the County Council's "Guided Busway Local Liaison Forum - Oakington to Cambridge" will be on Thursday at the Meadows Community Centre.

The meeting starts at 7pm. If you wish to attend please contact Neil McGovern or myself in the usual way: the County rules do not allow members of the public but we believe guests of Councillors are allowed.

Guided Bus works update

On Tuesday the gantry that lays the the guided busway reached Milton Road. It has now started back towards Longstanton during which time it will make the changes needed at the junctions.

So the good news is that the noisiest stages of construction (ground levelling and guideway laying) are finished as far as this section of the guideway are concerned.

The bad news is that this doesn't mean the work is finished.

Firstly the guideway needs some work. Bob Menzies, the County Council officer in charge of the project tells me that the work so far

"will just leave the stops, guideway infill, cycleway and landscaping
to do. None of which are particularly noisy."

Secondly the work on Milton Road itself continues. This has been delayed by delays in utility companies "diverting the services" (i.e. moving cables and pipes). This is now expected to take another 2 weeks or so according to the representative of Nuttall at last nights Guided Busway Local Liaison Forum. After that there is about 7 more weeks of work.

In the mean time we don't have a bus stop for residents of Lovell Rd. Cllr McGovern has written to Bob Menzies and Stagecoach about this issue. A suggestion that a temporary stop be positioned on Greenend Road was received positively at last night's meeting so watch this space for more news.

Guided busway nearly at King's Hedges

The construction of the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway (CGB) is expected to reach the A14 by the weekend. The current schedule will have the Gantry (the machine that places the preformed blocks into position) reaching Milton Road in August, which means that the construction work on the main busway will hit King's Hedges soon.

We already have the start of work on the Milton Road end. This current work is apparently "utility companies excavating for utility diversion" and the construction of a new footpath.

I've just attended a meeting of the "Local Liaison Forum" for the Busway. At this meeting the County officer in charge, Bob Menzies, said that the main disruption caused by the building in other sections was in the ground works: the digging and compression of the land prior to the gantry arriving. Residents of Histon have found other problems as well!

Please get in touch with us if the development causes you any problems and we shall see what can be done to minimise (or better yet stop) the disruption.