[Discuss] reply to Joanna

[Anne Marie Garvey]

1. I agree with Joanna about the problems at the Main Railway Station and the access to buses. She is quite right to point out how awfully hard it is to access the buses now.

2. With Simon I don't agree about pavement cycling. There are many examples where pedestrians share the pavement happily with cyclists, on Milton Road for instance. There is no real danger to pedestrians from Cyclists, compare the casualties although i will concede Joanna that it can be alarming. I think that if you have time to have an exchange with a girl on a bike, surely that is a good thing? We can all live together and to set up cyclists against pedestrians is to play into the hands of the real enemy the car user. Note the latest on car drivers' behaviour, killing people, pedestrians and cyclists, whilst on mobile phones. It is appalling.

I agree that the land south of Cambridge has been rendered up to motor traffic is a strangely covert way . And sad to hear that the Huntingdon commons witll have no benefit from the new A14 - which widening will be a stop gap failure in my view, 


On 26 Jul 2014, at 22:35, Simon Norton wrote:

> 1. I agree with Joanna about the problems of the existing bus interchange at
> Cambridge main station. I have always been lukewarm about the new station, but
> believe firmly that if it's going ahead we need to make the best of it. The
> proposed new bridge will be available to pedestrians as well as cyclists, giving
> access to Ditton Meadows and Stourbridge Common from the north side and to the
> new station and whatever buses do operate from it from the south side.
> 
> 2. I don't agree with Joanna re cycling. I don't think I have ever been put in
> danger by a cyclist. Agreed, people cycling at speed can put pedestrians in
> danger and for them the road or dedicated cycle routes is indeed the proper
> place. But the road is no place for novice cyclists to gain experience. The
> London press has been full of examples where lorries have run cyclists over,
> even killing them, and got away with at most a derisory fine and short driving
> ban.
> 
> I am concerned at the general tenor of the posting, and others on this group,
> which seems to regard encroachment on our open spaces by structures that help
> cyclists and pedestrians as a serious matter while encroachment for motorists is
> condoned. Some years ago I tried to get SOS interested in the Addenbrookes link
> road plans, which combined with the guided busway and new development have
> completely carved up the area between Trumpington and Addenbrookes that had for
> nearly 40 years raised my heart when approaching Cambridge by train from the
> south. Yes, the area is not a public open space, but it is intended to make it
> one, and there has long been permissive access. And with the guided busway then
> under construction, providing a park & ride service from Trumpington, there was
> no need to give motorists direct access to the Addenbrookes area.
> 
> Outside Cambridge, when the current A14 was built through Huntingdon there was
> considerable encroachment on the town's commons which I had often enjoyed. Now
> there are proposals to divert the A14, but the existing route, far from being
> closed, is to become a busy local distributor route with new road links further
> carving up the commons.
> 
> I will be making a further posting with comments on the use of existing and
> former rail routes as cycle and pedestrian routes.
> 
> Simon Norton
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> discuss mailing list
> discuss at soscambridge.org.uk
> http://soscambridge.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/discuss_soscambridge.org.uk