Agenda item

To consider the attached report.

The Executive Board:

(a)        APPROVED the process for developing the transport programme for the next stage of the City Deal and to address congestion in Cambridge.

(b)        APPROVED the process to commence the development of proposals to address congestion in Cambridge.

The Executive Board gave consideration to a report which outlined the proposed process for developing the transport programme for the next steps of the City Deal.  It also sought to identify how the Cambridge congestion issues would be dealt with in the context of the wider transport strategy for the Greater Cambridge area.

Developing the next stages of the City Deal Transport programme

Graham Hughes, Cambridgeshire County Council’s Executive Director of Economy, Transport and Environment, presented the report which reminded Board Members of the process that had been followed for tranche one of the City Deal programme as agreed at the meeting of the Board on 28 January 2015.  Within that prioritised programme was an allocation for programme development in years six to ten, recognising the importance of working up detail around the schemes to be delivered from 2020 onwards as well. 

The proposal for tranche two consisted of reconsidering those schemes not included as part of tranche one, using the same prioritisation tool that had been used previously as developed by Cambridge Econometrics and SQW.  This assessment would take account of the schemes that had already been prioritised and the planned developments emerging through Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire District Councils’ Local Plans.  This work could be undertaken over the summer and be reported back to the Joint Assembly for consideration in the Autumn before proceeding to the Executive Board.

Councillor Tim Bick, Chairman of the City Deal Joint Assembly, presented the outcomes of the Assembly’s consideration of this aspect of the report following its meeting held on 6 March 2015.  He asked the Board to note the following points:

·         the Assembly accepted the proposed early process to reconsider schemes not included as part of the tranche one prioritised list, however, it was given assurance that these schemes would not in principle have precedence over new schemes which could emerge from subsequent deliberations and may add greater value to the City Deal objectives;

·         the Assembly requested that the report on tranche two schemes scheduled for the Autumn should include all known and forecast funding streams available to transport investment relevant to the City Deal objectives.

Councillor Bick also reported that a number of representations had been received expressing concern about the future of the three rural cycling schemes which had not been included in the tranche one prioritisation process.  The Assembly therefore approved the following proposal:

“The Joint Assembly welcomes the success of the County Council’s bid to the Cycling City Ambition Fund and notes that it should enable parts of the rural cycling projects, considered at the last meeting, to proceed independent of the City Deal.  It also recommends to the Executive Board that the originally tabled cycling infrastructure schemes (or parts of them) that are not funded from the Cycling City Ambition Fund or any other external source should be treated as reserve projects within tranche one of the City Deal programme, due to the acknowledged high risk of many of the bigger prioritised schemes, the cycling projects’ attractive value for money in terms of enabling economic growth, their deliverability and ‘spade ready’ status and the role they can play in connecting people with jobs within the specific demographic of the Cambridge technology cluster.”

The following points by Board Members were noted:

·         the schemes in the tranche two priority list should not be listed in such a way that one scheme was seen as having more priority than another scheme;

·         the tranche two programme had to be agile;

·         the important aspects of the tranche one and tranche two programmes was the inclusion of pipeline schemes and congestion reduction schemes;

·         the schemes for tranche two coming before the Assembly and Board in June would have to be high level and would only be concepts, similar to those that were presented as part of the tranche one prioritisation process;

·         soft measures and behavioural change were also important factors.

Considering the proposal approved by the Joint Assembly in respect of cycling schemes, the Executive Board did not support their re-introduction as reserve projects in view of the fact that other funding sources may be available to deliver them and that the issue could also be considered again as part of the programme review for the first five years.  It was also acknowledged that they would be reconsidered as part of the tranche two prioritisation exercise should additional external resources not have been identified.

City centre congestion

Graham Hughes outlined that a significant package of £22.6 million had been allocated towards city centre capacity improvements as part of the tranche one prioritisation process.  The partner Councils had commissioned consultants to undertake works to look at a wide range of measures to free up movement within Cambridge and connect with other schemes being delivered through the City Deal.  Officers had suggested themes for further exploration that could be categorised as follows:

·         more restrictions on movement, such as current access controls through the Core Traffic Scheme;

·         demand management, which could be fiscal (such as workplace parking levies) or physical (such as additional parking restrictions);

·         capacity enhancement, such as further bus priorities which were likely to be at the expense of capacity for cars in the most central areas;

·         behavioural measures, to encourage other modes of transport.

Mr Hughes reported that a high level analysis of this work on these four themes could be available for reporting to the June cycle of Joint Assembly and Executive Board meetings. 

Councillor Tim Bick reported that the Joint Assembly agreed that this was one of the most challenging aspects of the City Deal transport vision and would require innovative and radical thinking.  To ensure the highest level of contribution and most balanced responses, the Assembly suggested that the Board ensured that any stage in public engagement was not confined to the summer period when a lot of the population, including much of the large academic community, was not resident.

Members of the Board supported the Assembly’s comments in respect of public consultation and public engagement in respect of city centre schemes.

The Executive Board:

(a)        APPROVED the process for developing the transport programme for the next stage of the City Deal and to address congestion in Cambridge.

(b)        APPROVED the process to commence the development of proposals to address congestion in Cambridge.