Traffic & Transport
Delayed Great British Railways’ first station to open at Cambridge South in June | Rail industry
The delayed Cambridge South station will finally open in late June – and become the first station to be given full Great British Railways branding, the government has announced.
The station sits beside the city’s Biomedical Campus, Europe’s largest medical research centre, and will connect it with direct trains to London, Brighton and Stansted airport, as well as up to nine trains an hour to the centre of Cambridge itself.
Services will begin calling at Cambridge South on Sunday 28 June, the Department for Transport said, with 1.8 million passengers expected annually.
The DfT said the adjacent Biomedical Campus was forecast to contribute £18.2bn to the UK economy by 2050, with employees likely to double to 40,000, boosted in part by the new transport links.
The station, the city’s third, was supposed to open in 2025 but was delayed, partly due to the collapse of a contractor responsible for fitting out the electrics.
The rail minister, Peter Hendy, said Cambridge South, which was built with £250m of government investment and a small private sector contribution, would “open up access to jobs, homes and world-class facilities for people across the region, boosting the growth of the Biomedical Campus as one of the most important engines of growth in the country”.
He added: “As the first new Great British Railways branded station, the opening is an important milestone for our railways and a sign of the real change public ownership will deliver.”
Jeremy Westlake, chief executive for Network Rail, said the station would “significantly improve travel and connectivity for campus staff, visitors, and the wider community for many years to come”.
He added: “Thousands of people have worked tirelessly on this fantastic project to build a modern, accessible and sustainable station that reflects the excellence of the work that is being undertaken in Europe’s largest biomedical facility.”
The station’s permanent signage will be in GBR brand colours – a design drawn up by a small group of ministers and advisers within the DfT to save money, with uncertain results. The station will also be displaying the more professionally acclaimed new Railway Clock.
It will also eventually serve the East West Rail line which is being built across to Oxford, although the delayed start of initial services between Milton Keynes and Oxford and uncertainty about the exact route is likely to mean direct trains between the two university cities will not start in 2030 as hoped.
Meanwhile, HS2 Ltd has announced contracts to develop the high-speed railway’s control centre and rolling stock depot in Birmingham.
It said the new hub at Washwood Heath, to be built under an £856m contract won by a joint venture of Taylor Woodrow and Aureos Rail, would support more than 1,000 jobs.
The contract award was assessed by an independent review panel, as the government and HS2 attempt to ensure efficient delivery and costs on the project, whose overall budget is being reassessed.
Hendy said it was another milestone in getting HS2 back on track, and that the railway would “create thousands of jobs across the West Midlands – from the construction teams transforming this former industrial site, to the skilled workforce who will operate this state-of-the-art facility for decades to come.”
Traffic & Transport
‘A long road ahead’: could community car-sharing help UK hit climate targets? | Travel and transport
In the aftermath of the Covid pandemic Miriam Stoate, a regenerative farmer from rural Leicestershire, noticed that too many people in her small village in England’s East Midlands were struggling to get around.
Although there were plenty of cars parked in Tilton, too often she found some of the village’s residents did not have access to one when they really needed it.
“Whether because of ill health, meaning they could no longer drive, or because at times there was a need for more than one vehicle per household, there was a problem,” said Stoate.
When the local community energy organisation Green Fox got in touch, Stoate and a group of volunteers decided to try something different. With funding from Motability and Harborough district council, they launched Tilton’s electric car club in 2023. For a monthly fee it gives residents access to two electric vehicles (EVs) that can be hired by the hour or by the day. It also provides local volunteer drivers so residents who can no longer drive can still use the service.
“It’s been great,” said Stoate. “You can see the difference it has made to the community, not just in getting people better access to viable transport, but also helping people get to know each other more … People who would not necessarily have met previously are now friends.”
The initiative in Tilton offers one small solution in a wider struggle, as the UK grapples with the challenges of creating a sustainable and affordable transport system fit for the 21st century.
While public transport provision in parts of the UK may be significantly better than in other countries, particularly the US, emissions remain stubborn. Transport is the UK’s largest source of carbon emissions, with surface transport responsible for about 25% of the annual total. Efforts to rein in emissions have failed to keep pace with other sectors, and faster progress is essential if the UK is to meet its carbon goals.
Experts say some elements of the transition to a sustainable transport sector are moving in the right direction. The crisis in the Middle East has helped accelerate the UK’s take-up of electric vehicles, with figures showing EV sales jumped 59% in April and now account for around a quarter of all car sales.
But they say more will need to be done to create sustainable and affordable ways to move around – and meet the UK’s climate targets.
Anna Krajinska, the UK director of the Transport and Environment group, says that, although EV sales are growing, there is a concerted attempt by industry lobbyists to water down the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate, which forces car manufacturers to sell an increasing percentage of zero-emission vehicles each year.
“We have already seen some weakening of the mandate with more plug-in vehicles being allowed, which have five times the emissions of electric vehicles,” she said.
Krajinska says it is crucial that that there is no more slippage on the EV mandate, which stipulates that all new cars sold by 2035 are EVs and that a similar decarbonisation plan be created for trucks and lorries.
“Unless we stick to the EV mandate, it will slow down the availability of affordable EVs and mean people will be locked into fossil-fuel vehicles and the volatile markets they depend on for years to come.”
Much of the focus of UK government policy has been on moving from carbon-intensive vehicles to EVs, improving public transport, and encouraging walking and cycling.
But Chris Hayes, chief economist at the Common Wealth thinktank, says trains and bus services in the UK have suffered from decades of underinvestment as the transport network was broken up and money was diverted to shareholders – resulting in poorer services and higher fares.
“British rail passengers spend roughly three times as much per kilometre as in other countries, while half of the industry’s income comes from direct and indirect public subsidy.”
Hayes said the government had made some progress bringing elements of the rail system back into public ownership but that more needed to be done. “We need an integrated rail and bus service that is affordable and works for people and communities, rather than one in which the public shoulders the risk while shareholders reap the reward,” he said.
Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK’s policy director, said there was “a long road ahead” before public transport in the UK was appealing and affordable, but “the destination is well worth the effort”.
“Shifting journeys from cars to buses and trains won’t just reduce congestion, pollution and climate emissions, it may also help us cut our oil demand – a useful side-effect given the price and supply crunch that’s about to hit us thanks to the Iran war.”
However, Parr said this would require “major government investment, an overhaul of the entire train fare system and a lowering of the bus fare cap”.
“This should go in tandem with other measures to promote active travel and discourage polluting transport, such as higher taxes on SUVs, more bike lanes and 20mph zones.”
But some experts believe that, while moving to EVs and improving public transport and active travel are essential starting points, on their own they will not be enough.
Greg Marsden, a professor of transport governance at the University of Leeds, says that, even if the UK meets all its current targets, it is on course to overshoot the government’s own carbon budget for transport by 15%.
“Ambition is evaporating by the year,” he said. “Plans to reduce overall traffic have disappeared and the government is now working on the assumption that the number of cars on UK roads will increase by 10 million by 2050.”
Marsden is calling for a new transport taskforce to look at more innovative ways to reduce car reliance and carbon emissions.
“At the moment we are facing a situation where we are not only going to miss our targets for carbon reduction, we are also going to create more congestion, more parking on the streets. We need a more ambitious plan for what our cities are going to be like in the next 20 or 30 years.”
He said the taskforce should consider a range of options, including:
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Greater access to shared electric vehicles across rural and urban areas.
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Lighter, cheaper shared EVs for the vast majority of journeys under 30 miles.
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Fleets of shared EVs at major train stations to connect train and road systems.
“We spend an awful lot of money on cars … but that money could be spent in different ways and still give access to all the mobility that we need,” he said. “At the same time, it could reduce congestion and emissions, and improve the quality of people’s lives.”
Marsden, who is heading up a project in Leeds working with the council and local residents on how to reduce car use, said it was crucial to work with communities rather than impose solutions from above. “This will only work if we listen to and work with communities to come up with workable solutions.”
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “Car-sharing schemes help people travel more easily, cut congestion and reduce emissions – and we’re already encouraging councils to support them through statutory guidance.
“Our new transport strategy goes even further, committing to publish new guidance to help local authorities boost these services in their areas.”
Back in Tilton, Stoate acknowledges there have been challenges with their car-sharing scheme – from getting affordable insurance to initially convincing some older residents that electric cars were safe.
She said support from the transport sharing charity CoMoUK had been invaluable and that people from other villages had since been in touch to see if they could set up something similar.
“It’s about learning from each other … we now have a viable transport option that everyone can use without buying more and more cars – and it has helped to build our community, too.”
Traffic & Transport
Our cities are choked by cars – here’s how experts would fix them | Travel and transport
1. Expand and improve public transport
The shift from fuel-burning cars to electric ones greatly reduces planet-heating pollution but does not make streets safer. For that, people need reliable options for getting around.
“Making sure public transport can meet the mobility needs of residents is step one,” says Alissa Kendall, the director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. “If travel is prohibitively slow, if it doesn’t get you to where you need to go, it will never encourage those wealthy enough to own and operate a car to stop buying and using them – and it won’t serve the needs of those who are transit dependent.”
Sprawling cities such as those in North America are harder to connect than denser urban areas common in Europe and Asia. Even so, getting people out of cars and into buses could still save money. Free bus travel, for example, became a centrepiece of Zohran Mamdani’s successful New York mayoral campaign, but research suggests lower-cost tickets have only a limited effect on reducing car use.
Matthias Cremer-Schulte, a transport researcher at the Technical University of Dortmund, says: “The people who benefit most are often those who were already using public transport. The ones who really matter for reducing car use – people who drive because they need the flexibility – are rarely tempted by a cheaper bus ticket alone.”
2. Share space with pedestrians and cyclists
As cars came to dominate cities after the second world war, public space was redesigned around them. Pedestrians were relegated to narrow pavements and cyclists had to decide whether riding a bike on the road was worth the risk to their life.
Giving road space back to other forms of transport is one of the most powerful tools that cities have to get people out of cars. By carving out lanes for bikes, converting parking spaces into green areas and pedestrianising streets, mayors can encourage active forms of travel by making it safer and more convenient.
Measures sometimes criticised as a “war on motorists” are often, in reality, attempts to manage limited public space more efficiently, says Hannah Budnitz, a researcher at the transport studies unit of the University of Oxford. Cars are among the least space-efficient ways of moving people from A to B, especially in rush-hour traffic, and spend most of their time parked.
“If you only need a car once a week, you can’t have a seventh of a car,” Budnitz says. “If you only need a large vehicle that can take a trailer for your annual camping trip, you can’t have 4% of that car.”
To avoid the public backlash that comes with reducing road space, some cities, such as Münster in Germany, have run experiments in which streets have been closed to cars for a few months to let residents experience the difference first-hand. A similar approach has been used in Stockholm, which trialled pairing a congestion charge with expanded public transport before putting the policy to a referendum.
“Most of the time, once people have lived with it, the opposition softens,” says Cremer-Schulte. “Other cities struggle to do this because local politicians are understandably nervous – nobody wants to lose an election over a bike lane.”
3. Focus on suburbs
Cities such as Copenhagen and Amsterdam have shown it is possible to reduce car use to fewer than one in three journeys by investing in reliable public transport and extensive bike lanes. Yet many of the vehicles that remain on city roads come from outside urban centres.
“This mismatch between where people live and where people work is what entails such big problems,” says Susana López-Aparicio, a deputy director of the urban environment department at NILU, a Norwegian research institute. “We see at eight in the morning all European cities are affected by commuting and heavy traffic.”
Improving public transport in outer suburbs and commuter belts – areas often beyond the direct control of city mayors – can give people viable alternatives to driving. Ensuring more towns have essential amenities within walking distance – a concept known as the “15-minute city” – can also reduce the need for long journeys.
López-Aparicio observed this in a study on urban sprawl in Warsaw, Poland, and experienced it herself when she moved closer to the centre of Oslo from a house on the outskirts. “I have not only more public transport available, but also the supermarket, the post office, the hairdresser – all these things I can do by walking.”
4. Understand why people drive
In rural villages, where frequent public transport can be too costly to provide, or for people with certain disabilities, cars can be a lifeline for accessing work and services. But for many others, car-free options could be prove more attractive with just a few changes.
Understanding why people drive is the first step to reducing car dependence. In many European cities, public transport can look “quite homogeneous” at night because it is mostly used by young men who feel safe enough to travel, says Brian Caulfield, a transportation professor at Trinity College Dublin. “With deeper consultation, you can uncover the barriers that people have to using public transport, walking or cycling. When you better understand that, then you can better design alternative solutions.”
Those fixes can range from extending late-night public transport services and improving street lighting to introducing community car-sharing schemes in villages and small towns, where some drivers rarely need to use their cars.
At the same time, normalising the use of public transport can help challenge social stigma. In North America, for example, buses and trains are often associated with poverty and crime, while in much of Europe and Asia public transport carries far less cultural baggage.
In Norway, the former king Olav V rode the subway during the 1973 oil crisis to encourage people to avoid driving. Today, members of the royal family are still regularly spotted using trams and buses.
“Taking public transport is not something that you do because you are poor,” said López-Aparicio. “It is something that you do for the common wealth of the whole society.”
At nearly 75, I have to sit on the front seat at the top of the bus like Justin Myers (49 ways to have fun right now!, 4 May). I have been known to let one bus go and wait for the next one if there are people in my seat. If it ever gets to the point where my legs won’t get me up there, I shall know that my time has come.
Liz Fairhurst
Banstead, Surrey
Sara Hudston’s country diary (6 May) chimes exactly with the sightings on our weekly butterfly count for Yorkshire Wildlife, similarly on a dismantled railway siding, here in North Yorkshire. The holly blues are particularly numerous this year, but we have yet to see an adder. We have, however, had a huge Morel toadstool, which can occur where there are heavy metal deposits.
Gill Mawby
York
Re cutting speed limits (Report, 7 May), back in 1977 Jimmy Carter reduced speeds to 55mph due to oil shortages. We were travelling for three months around the US on Greyhound buses and, I think, saw much more of the country because of the slower pace.
Jenny Langran
Beeston, Nottinghamshire
We are increasingly being informed of “bad actors” and “malicious’ actors” being involved in the “theatre of war”. Whatever happened to the thespian redoubt of merely “resting”?
Brian Robinson
Daingean, County Offaly, Ireland
Your correspondent refuses, at 58, to accept Zoe Williams’ “old age” label (Letters, 5 May). Just for their information, at 78, so do I!
Prof Gwyneth Boswell
Norwich
Banbury – man wanted after ‘rape’ as police issue warning
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