Agenda item

To receive any questions from members of the public.  The standard protocol to be observed by public speakers is attached.

Questions by members of the public were asked and answered as follows:

 

Question by Charles Nisbet

 

Charles Nisbet asked for assurance that the Greater Cambridge City Deal had the legal authority to spend any part of its funding on providing trees to replace those that it intended to remove from Milton Road or Histon Road.

 

Graham Hughes, Executive Director of Economy, Transport and Environment at Cambridgeshire County Council, confirmed that the City Deal Executive Board did have the legal authority to spend part of its funding on replacing trees as part of a transport infrastructure scheme.  The County Council, as highways authority, had delegated its powers to the City Deal Executive Board in respect of City Deal transport infrastructure schemes and Mr Hughes confirmed that landscaping would form an integral part of these schemes and that the Board would be approving such details.

 

Question by Dr James Smith

 

Dr Smith asked what health impact assessment of the City Deal transport projects and proposals had been undertaken to date and what, if any, further health impact assessment was expected.

 

Mr Hughes confirmed that health impacts had been considered at a strategic level as part of the Strategic Environmental Assessment of the third Cambridgeshire Local Transport Plan, from which the City Deal schemes were drawn.  Further detailed assessments of individual schemes would be undertaken as part of the statutory processes that governed the delivery of major transport infrastructure schemes.

 

Councillor Lewis Herbert, Chairman of the Executive Board, reflected on air pollution in the city and highlighted that partners would continue to investigate solutions and any funding that may be available to help address the issue.  He added that this would include working with bus and taxi operators.

 

Councillor Ian Bates reminded the Board that public health was a County Council responsibility and an integral part of the work that Cambridgeshire County Council was doing across the county.

 

Question by Antony Carpen

 

Antony Carpen asked why the Executive Board’s risk management framework had not been signed off under the Shadow Assembly and Board, or at the first meetings of both bodies. 

 

Tanya Sheridan, City Deal Programme Director, gave an assurance that risk had been managed since the inception of the City Deal Programme.  She said that the fact that there had not been a single consolidated Risk Management Framework specifically for the City Deal up to now should not be taken as a reflection that the discipline of risk management had not been taking place.  This had been guided by the principle enshrined in the Executive Board’s Terms of Reference that the processes of the lead Council for a certain function should be followed for that specific function. 

 

Now that the Programme was moving into a delivery phase it was right that clearer political oversight was brought into the process and the proposed Risk Management Framework scheduled for consideration at this meeting at a later item sought to facilitate this.

 

Antony Carpen also asked what assessment Cambridge University and its colleges had made of the submissions to the City Deal provided by Rail Haverhill, Wisbech Rail and the Connected Cambridge Light Rail.

 

Professor Nigel Slater, Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cambridge, felt unable to comment since the question related to his employer rather than the business of the City Deal Executive Board.  He added, however, that the University in its response to the devolution consultation did agree with the broad priorities and principle of encouraging improved transport links across the area, and beyond.

 

Professor Slater made the point that colleges were separate institutions, of which there were 31 in Cambridge, and that he had no authority to comment on their activities.

 

Question by Angela Chadwyck-Healey

 

Representing the Madingley Road Area Residents’ Association, Angela Chadwyck-Healey thought that proposed City Deal measures would cause chaos within the city, surrounding streets and the M11 when drivers would seek alternative routes following the introduction of Peak Congestion Control Points.  She asked why no Peak Congestion Control Points were being proposed for roads in the north and north-west of Cambridge.

 

Mr Hughes explained that current engagement on the eight point plan was on the principles involved, such as the introduction of Peak Congestion Control Points, and was an early stage of the process.  At this stage, assessment of Control Points and modelling to date had indicated that a scheme involving six main Peak Congestion Control Points, as outlined in the engagement material, was likely to lead to improvements to traffic conditions across the city, including the roads to the north as many through movements in the area were removed.  The impact would therefore be citywide.  Mr Hughes accepted that traffic would be displaced, but made the point that significant changes in people’s choice of mode of travel were also expected.  This would be in parallel with the introduction of Control Points and much improved alternatives such as Park and Ride, bus services and improved conditions for pedestrians and cyclists.

 

Councillor Herbert supported these comments and reported that the Board had looked at different combinations of measures and the evidence surrounding different traffic impacts.  He felt that the proposed Peak Congestion Control Points would achieve a significant impact on peak time car movement and help achieve reliable peak time bus services.

 

Question by Mal Schofield

 

Mal Schofield was concerned with the lack of detail set out in the City Deal progress report under item 8 at this meeting in relation to each of the schemes coming forward for consideration by Joint Assembly and Executive Board at future meetings.  Regarding the city centre capacity improvements scheme, for example, the commentary included the words ’25 January 2017: Executive Board to consider responses and feedback, and decide whether to approve project delivery’, which he felt was too simplistic and did not give sufficient justification to the size of the scheme. 

Mr Hughes agreed that there were lots of significant issues out for consultation, scheduled to be reported back into the Joint Assembly and the Executive Board.  He explained that there was a series of other schemes and that they would all come together as part of the City Deal package.  Officers had been looking at how schemes fed into each other and came together.  To assist with the Board’s decision-making in this respect, an important aspect of future reporting would be to highlight how respective schemes related to one another. 

 

Tanya Sheridan accepted that the scheme referred to in the question consisted of a number of elements and that this could be better reflected in the Forward Plan.

 

Councillor Herbert took the point that the wording was not detailed enough in the progress report, adding that demand management was an essential feature of the City Deal programme.  He said that by making early progress in this respect other transport infrastructure schemes would be able to benefit from and be informed by the introduction of these measures, prior to final decisions being taken on specific schemes.

 

It was agreed that the following questions by Erik de Visser, Barbara Taylor, Matthew Danish and Michael Page would be taken and answered together due to them consisting of the same or a similar subject:

 

Question by Erik de Visser

 

Erik de Visser asked if the plans to widen Histon Road and Milton Road could be delayed until the second tranche of the City Deal, after the trialling of road closures, to see whether widening the road and chopping down trees was absolutely necessary.

 

Question by Barbara Taylor

 

Barbara Taylor referred to a Cambridge News article on 30 August 2016 which said that, assuming the proposed peak time road closures went ahead as outlined, that Milton Road and Histon Road would see ‘big reductions in traffic’.  She assumed that the County Council would agree to a citywide neighbourhood parking scheme that would further reduce cars coming into Cambridge looking for free parking by some considerable percentage and said that if school traffic were to be robustly addressed as well it could add another double-digit reduction.  Given all of this, she asked why public money was being spent on expensive, damaging, unproven and resoundingly unpopular bus lanes on Milton Road and Histon Road before the evidence of congestion-busting measures could be assessed.

 

Question by Matthew Danish

 

Matthew Danish felt that bus priority did not have to mean destructive road widening and thought that bus journeys could instead be vastly improved through modern measures including contactless fares, multiple doors on buses and correctly and well-placed floating bus stops with step-free boarding.  He said that unreliability was not only a peak time problem but a problem all of the time in Cambridge, which he felt bus lanes could not solve and highlighted that evidence suggested modernisation alone would make a huge improvement.  In addition to the citywide control point and parking schemes also consulted on, Mr Danish was of the opinion that road widening was even more pointless, citing bus modernisation as an easier and better solution. 

 

Mr Danish referred to the Access Study which suggested that the true cause of bus unreliability was not traffic congestion but was rather unpredictable bus dwell times caused by poor ticketing and boarding practices, with maps in the document showing that existing bus lanes did not prevent delays to buses. 

 

Mr Danish therefore asked why modernisation could not be used as a basis for bus priority, rather than leaping immediately to tarmac when buses were still operating in an old fashioned way.

 

Question by Michael Page

 

Michael Page referred to the Cambridge News article in respect of Peak Congestion Control Points, which highlighted traffic modelling data from Mott McDonald indicating a decrease of 10% or more in traffic flows along Histon Road and Milton Road if the Control Point plan was implemented, together with a decrease of nearly 30% in private car journeys starting and ending in Cambridge as a whole.

 

He therefore asked why the City Deal would go ahead with expensive and disruptive engineering works on Histon and Milton Roads on the basis of assumptions that would not apply if the city centre congestion plans were implemented.

 

Addressing the four questions from Erik de Visser, Barbara Taylor, Matthew Danish and Michael Page, Mr Hughes explained that the proposals for Milton Road and Histon Road were part of a package of measures to tackle congestion through improving public transport, cycling and walking.  These measures were proposed not just to tackle the current congestion, but to ensure that the city and surrounding area could cope with the very significant planned growth. He emphasised the point that the City Deal Programme was seeking to address congestion problems in the long term, taking into account this growth, rather than focussing on the short term. 

 

Mr Hughes acknowledged that whilst the Peak Congestion Control Points proposals that were being put forward dealt with peak time congestion, there were congestion issues over a much wider period as well.  He was of the view, however, that the introduction of Peak Congestion Control Points would assist in addressing congestion at the busiest times of the day and that broader bus priorities on key routes in the city would allow for the improvement of bus reliability at other times.

 

Reflecting on bus modernisation, Mr Hughes agreed that bus companies probably did need to change the way they provided services in terms of ticketing and boarding, but said that these were not the only issues to consider with the current way in which buses operated.  One of the key factors was the fact that buses themselves were getting caught in the same congestion as other traffic, with the disembarking and boarding of buses not having a significant influence on this aspect of their unreliability.  The scale of the problem was such that it required some difficult decisions to be made about important roads, with freeing buses from congestion and providing top quality cycling facilities being essential.  Mr Hughes added that people would cycle quite long distances if safe provision was put in place, with a lot of that provision coming alongside bus lanes.

 

In terms of on-street parking, the City Council and County Council were currently working on a revised policy which would seek to discourage people from commuting into the city.  School travel also contributed to some of the problems at peak times, particularly in mornings, but Mr Hughes reminded the Board that there was a broader issue to consider in this respect with the problem being less about schools themselves and more about the behaviour of parents.

 

 

The assessment of Peak Congestion Control Points had indicated improvements to conditions in the north of the city may be achievable, but there was still a need for improved public transport services and Milton Road and Histon Road would still be busy.  The modernisation principles highlighted by Mr Danish would be of benefit, but would not get the bus through a queue of traffic and running reliably if there was not space for it to bypass the queue. 

 

Mr Hughes confirmed that these measures were targeting a 10% to 15% reduction in congestion and that a balanced package would be necessary to achieve it.

 

Councillor Herbert reiterated Mr Hughes’ response, stating that the approach being adopted consisted of a combination of measures focusing on peak time congestion and necessary local transport infrastructure schemes.  He said that local schemes would be able to benefit from the information and data arising from demand management, with up-to-date modelling on its impact able to take place.  Councillor Herbert added that, in the Board’s view, it was not feasible to delay the introduction of these measures until beyond 2020.

 

Councillor Francis Burkitt was pleased that people had faith in the Peak Congestion Control Points and Work Place Parking Levy as measures that should be pursued, but agreed that these would not solve the congestion problems in Cambridge on their own and that other measures were also needed. 

 

With regards to bus modernisation, Mr Burkitt agreed with the points made by Mr Danish in this respect, but said that the City Deal could not change the way that buses operated in terms of how services were run.  However, the City Deal Programme could create the infrastructure and opportunities to facilitate bus operators investing and modernising in the ways suggested.  He was hopeful that by 2017 some of these initiatives would start to be introduced in the Greater Cambridge area, noting that Stagecoach had indicated that it saw Cambridge as a place worth investing in.  He also referred to some of the Smart Cambridge measures that would be introduced, such as the launch of an ‘app’ which would see real time bus journey information for individual buses being made available to the public.  Councillor Burkitt highlighted that Stagecoach had also indicated that it would introduce further district fare zones, making it cheaper for people in South Cambridgeshire to travel in and out of Cambridge.  He closed by saying that lots of things were happening to encourage people to use buses and was pleased that these were all coming together.

 

Question by Richard Taylor

 

Richard Taylor referred to a question asked at a meeting of Cambridgeshire County Council on 19 July 2016 in respect of decisions regarding trees on the public highway.  He sought clarity as to whether such decisions regarding City Deal schemes had been delegated to a single officer at the County Council or the City Deal Executive Board. 

 

Mr Hughes explained that for County Council schemes the final decision regarding trees was delegated to him as the Executive Director for Economy, Transport and Environment which he said would always be undertaken in consultation with elected Members.  In terms of City Deal schemes, the County Council had delegated its powers regarding trees on the public highway to the City Deal Executive Board, so the Board would take any decisions in this respect and not an officer.

 

Mr Taylor also asked whether the Board could provide an update on the arrangements for any upcoming workshops and Local Liaison Forum meetings for Milton Road and made the point that they were not running in the same way as other local authority meetings.

 

Tanya Sheridan reminded Mr Taylor that Local Liaison Forums were communications forums as part of stakeholder engagement and, although open to the public, did not have to comply with the same rules and regulations as other formal local authority meetings.  She confirmed that the dates for upcoming workshops would be communicated once arrangements had been confirmed.

 

Question by Edward Leigh

 

Edward Leigh asked for the publication of a number of Web-based Transport Analysis Guide Stage 1 compliance documents and sought confirmation that predicted bus journey time variability would be published as part of the business case reports for all City Deal schemes. 

 

Mr Hughes said that he and his team were completely transparent and confirmed that whatever information they had on the documents requested he would ensure would be made available. 

 

Question by Anne Hamill 

 

Anne Hamill asked whether the Executive Board would make a commitment to having an evenly spaced avenue of mature, flowering trees in grass verges that were a minimum of one metre wide on each side of the whole length of Milton Road.

 

Councillor Herbert confirmed that the Joint Assembly, following its meeting held on 25 August 2016, had made a recommendation on this issue which was scheduled for consideration as part of the next item at this meeting.

 

Question by Maureen Mace

 

Maureen Mace asked how much delay the modelling statistics showed on a normal working day and when the A14 was upgraded or closed due to an incident when the roadworks for widening Milton Road were due to commence.  She also asked how many years from the start of the roadworks it would take until the average bus journey time of 99 seconds was reached.

 

Mr Hughes responded by saying that it would depend entirely on whatever scheme was produced.  At this stage there was no detailed scheme to consider, so it was not possible to undertake any modelling as suggested.

 

Once a specific scheme had been agreed a programme of works would be identified, setting out proposed timescales and any necessary restrictions.  He emphasised that works would always seek to minimise delay but that there was a trade-off between speed, which may require full closure of roads, and keeping traffic moving, which would mean schemes took longer to deliver.  Mr Hughes noted that the normal process was to undertake work on major routes only outside of peak periods.