MIS-GUIDED BUSWAY?
HOWARD JOHNSTON presents his arguments as to why converting a mothballed railway in Cambridgeshire into a guided busway has failed, and says it is not too late to relay tracks
When Transport Minister Roger Freeman paid a visit to the UK’s technology capital of Cambridge back in 1993, he confidently predicted that a full rail service could be returned to the mothballed 15-mile branch to St Ives within four years. He also declared the cost would be around £ 6.5 million.
So much for his optimism. The passenger service did eventually come back, but the rails were torn up to create the world’s longest guided busway, with concrete beams replacing the steel tracks.
Today, almost seven years after its opening, the busway continues to divide opinion, with a total bill that is edging ever closer to £ 200m.
As well as its construction budget having spiralled in almost stellar fashion, major repairs are now required because the surface is cracking up, and because some of the infrastructure is slowly slipping into the boggy Fenland soil.
It has even reached the stage where some of the busway’s sternest critics are suggesting that the return of a ‘proper’ railway is the only real long-term answer, although the project’s principal sponsor Cambridgeshire County Council (CCC) is unlikely to consider that idea before the busway’s design life ends in 2051, 33 years from now.
CCC and main contractor BAM Nuttall have long been at legal loggerheads over how much the taxpayer should have to fork out to keep the busway operating. The latest estimate for essential remedial work is £ 35m-plus.
On the other hand, the principal ‘plus’ for the busway is its undoubted popularity with the travelling public, who enjoy the fast, frequent services in relative comfort. Many passengers originate from Peterborough, taking in a number of park-and-ride sites as well as deviating into villages and business parks before hitting Cambridge’s science park,
the main station, and the regional hospital.
The ridership figure is claimed to be more than 20 million since the busway opened in August 2011, although the numbers for the ‘true’ St Ives-Cambridge concrete corridor are not separated out. Nor is it stated how many senior citizens enjoying a bargain bus pass day out after 0930 on weekdays crowd out farepayers who are left standing, waiting for the following service.
The busway is a dedicated double-track alignment where standard-size buses are fitted with a special side guidewheel that touches a raised kerb, allowing the driver to take his hands off the steering wheel and reach speeds of 55mph (30mph at road intersections).
The ‘track’ comprises thousands of pre-cast concrete sections that are mostly 49ft long and 8½ft wide) laid on foundations. A walking/ cycle/bridleway/maintenance road is also provided on the old railway, but the risk of mishaps is relatively high because the road junctions are not protected with barriers as a railway could be, and there are no fences. No overtaking by buses is possible.
The service is jointly operated by Stagecoach and Go Whippet, who are licensed by CCC for five years and have supplied high-specification buses with air-conditioning and WiFi.
Critics cite a long list of the busway’s drawbacks. Beginning with safety, there have been several accidents, including a fatality. Some of the incidents have been attributed to driver error.
And no matter how often buses run at peak times, they question how a 70-seat doubledecker can be considered a better option than an eight-car Great Northern Class 387 electric multiple unit, of which there is a plentiful supply. These nearly new units can be seen enjoying long off-peak layovers in the stabling sidings north of Cambridge station, and two ‘387s’ together have 440 seats (and four toilets). Class 700s hold even more.
If Freeman’s railway option had been implemented, together with a park-andride system and connecting buses, St Ives and much of the prosperous northwest Cambridgeshire catchment area could have enjoyed a through service to London.
It is also worth noting that busway conversion is not on the agenda for the proposed reopening of the nearby MarchWisbech line, which is similarly intended to create a fast corridor for jobseekers to get to Cambridge more easily. The Wisbech model is also being followed by the new campaign to extend Cambridge-Ely-King’s Lynn trains
The guided bus was intended to create prosperity for St Ives with new factories and jobs… I doubt this has happened. Jerry Alderson, Finance Director, Railfuture
to the northwest Norfolk employment blackspot of Hunstanton.
The story of how the Cambridge-St Ives guided busway came to happen dates back to the period before privatisation 25 years ago, when no one in government was offering leadership, or indeed was able to devise a funding mechanism for a rail reinstatement of this magnitude.
Jerry Alderson was a founding father of the anti-busway action group Cambridge and St Ives Railway Organisation (CAST.IRON), a group of business people - including current and former employees of rail companies, chartered civil engineers and company directors - who found the determination to press ahead with the concrete option unstoppable. He is now finance director of Railfuture.
“It was just bad timing that we got a busway,” he says. “The railways were preoccupied with privatisation, uncertainty, and the fall-out from the two crashes at Hatfield and Potters Bar.
“The guided bus was intended to create prosperity for St Ives with new factories and jobs… I doubt this has happened.”
Cambridgeshire County Council, frustrated at the lack of progress, became intoxicated with the concept of buses… and more buses. Tramways were discounted because of their high capital costs, and the authority was unable to engage the new national infrastructure owner Railtrack. Meanwhile, the newly constituted train operators were finding their feet and seemed only concerned about financing existing services. East Anglia was managed for five years from 1995 by Prism Rail (remember them?), best remembered for creating the West Anglia Great Northern business, and then quickly selling out to National Express.
Buses, it was claimed, presented a positive solution and were much better suited for northwest Cambridgeshire, a prosperous area dominated by a string of rural communities and soon to be bolstered by a new 24,000-population township at Northstowe. However, CCC quickly gained a poor reputation for failing to secure cash contributions from developers.
The busway was born from the 2001 Cambridge-Huntingdon Multi-Modal Study (CHUMMS), which advocated the widening of the overloaded A14 East Coast ports-West Midlands trunk road to at least three lanes.
The railway from Chesterton Junction (Cambridge), disused since the end of gravel workings to Fen Drayton in the early 1990s, was in poor condition but could be revived as a busway into St Ives, with a new bridge over the River Great Ouse to replace the original removed after the withdrawal of BR passenger services in October 1970.
The former intermediate station sites at Swavesey, Longstanton, Oakington and
Histon could become bus stops, with a request stop at Fen Drayton for the nature reserve, plus other locations as new housing and business developments sprung up.
CAST.IRON’s comprehensive discrediting of CCC’s case for a busway instead of rail benefits fell on deaf ears. Even the 2,741 objections lodged before the public inquiry in 2004 failed to sway the Government inspector, and approval to scrap the railway was forthcoming at the end of the following year.
The first signs that the busway project was going off course came almost as soon as construction began. Bad weather, flooding and unexpected construction obstacles were cited by main contractor BAM Nuttall as reasons why the opening would be delayed - first from early 2009 to the summer, then to July 2010… and finally August 7 2011.
By this time, CCC had served notice on BAM Nuttall that it would not pay for the massive overrun in costs, and finally settled for a £ 33m compensation payment in September 2013. The authority hired another firm, Jackson Civil Engineering, to complete the project.
Today, services extend on-street into the centre of Cambridge, via the Science Park and Regional College, skimming past the railway station and on to Addenbrooke’s and Trumpington park-and-ride. However, there are problems on this last section because doubledecker buses are unable to negotiate the slow Hills Road and Long Road bridges.
At the eastern end of the busway at St Ives, the buses could use conventional secondary roads to link up intermediate villages to Huntingdon and Peterborough.
The original cost estimate for the project was £116.5m, of which £ 92m would come from central Government.
In 2017, a £4m busway extension was opened from Longstanton to serve the new Cambridge North station. However, Stagecoach withdrew many of its services to the station after just one month because of poor patronage.
And critics continue to argue that the busway’s defects are so deep-rooted that the only long-term solution is to put the railway back… whatever the cost.
The author acknowledges the support for this article from Railfuture’s East Anglia Chairman Peter Wakefield and national officer Jerry Alderson.