Guided busway details for Frank

[firbeck 859]

Frank, I didn't think it right to sabotage Beefsteaks thread, he's spent alot of time and effort editing his pictures.

If you want to know what's happening at Swavesey see this link:-

http:/www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/transport/guided/

Quite honestly, I think it's one of the biggest wastes of money I've ever seen.

For a start, while the railway to St Ives had been closed for a number of years, the original track, level crossings and all the infrastructure were still in place, it formed a natural existing route into Cambridge Station. So what do they do, rip it all up and build this abomination. For a start, the line is pretty rural, it doesn't serve many communities, but they're just trying to get traffic off the A14. The buses will all have to be specially built with special lateral guide wheels. The thing is, rather than be able to travel independantly into Cambridge, the buses will come off the old railway route at Histon and travel down the dreaded Milton Road, which is a nightmare at the best of times.

These guided busways have been tried before and failed miserably, Leeds for instance, so why are they chucking over £100m into developing this, I don't even know whose going to use it, the area is pretty sparsely populated, though there is an illegal immigration centre on the route, perhaps it's to help them get into Cambridge City centre and beg. Another government joke at our expense, I can see it failing miserably.

You lot complain about the Nottingham trams, but this 'wonderful' invention is ridiculous, imagine, ripping up existing track and replacing it with 100,000 tons of reinforced concrete, thats really eco friendly isn't it.

The only pub I can think of in Chesterford is the Crown and Thistle and Saffron Walden has so many pubs it could be any of them.

I wasn't down here when the BoB movie was filmed at DX, but I spent many happy hours watching them film 'Memphis Belle' there and the occasional foray to see the aircraft flying off to film 'Piece of Cake'. It's interesting to try and pick out some of the spots at DX where they filmed BoB, there's an interesting thread on an aviation forum with photos of the film as it was being made at DX.

Incidentally, my ex used to have quite a lot of involvement at Ciba Giegy during the mid 70's, were you still there then.

[mr rob t 11]

You've jogged my memory on this Firbeck. I've never seen a bus use the one in Leeds, infact it looks like a 2 mile long train undercarriage inspection pit. The last time i was in Cambridge they had progressed to just past the new buildings on the Uni'/college site. I'm of the same mind as you on this, a complete and utter waste of time, effort and above all else money. I can remember thinking at the time when i saw it " Surely thats not the same thing as they've built in Leeds " don't these people ever learn?

[Frank 13]

Interesting.

It seems that we may have stumbled across the development some months ago while out walking one Sunday morning. A particular bridge that we used to cross was demolished with large straight road works either side. makes sense now.

I downloaded the latest pdf publication (bottom right hand side of the web page) and - there is a nice photo of a bloke driving one of the new Stagecoach buses that will be used on this route.

Why has the bus got a steering wheel? It looks like the bus will just travel forwards and the upturned concrete sill will stop it from wandering - not to mention wearing out the sidewalls on the tyres.

[Ashley 288]

it says theres going to be a couple of side wheels so tyres should be ok, have you filled in the survey? I did with all sorts of rubbish answers, finishing up saying the biggest load of crap I've ever seen!

[Stan 386]

Still using other computers as mine not yet set up.(Interesting to see how many hard drives of people using this site have collapsed simultaneously)-?MI5?

Here in Adelaide we have the largest guided system in the world.(it has worked well and made money for almost 25 years). You can read about the Adelaide O-Bahn system on Wiki. Mariag may be interested as Modbury is a terminus.

[littlebro 234]

The Cambridge busway is costing roughly £120m for 40km = £3 million per kilometre.

The Nottingham NET 2 & 3 will cost £490m for 18km = over £27m per kilometre.

The Cambridge scheme is using largely a redundant rail line and will not require catenary wires etc.

[firbeck 859]

The railway authorities have been trying to open up the old Cambridge to Oxford cross country route that was closed many years ago as a so called much needed East West link without having to go via London. As this line formed a major part of it they are now stuffed.

I can undertand how expensive it is to rip up half the Nottingham streets and put the tram system in, but this route had all the railway infrastructure in place, yes it needed upgrading, but at no where near the cost wer'e talking of here. The trains could have run into Cambridge Station, which is far more central than Nottingham Midland and utilised existing DMU's, although Cambridge is electrified, it has diesel cross country routes all over East Anglia and the Midlands from there, so the stabling points are in position.

I note that they have sown grass between the concrete guides, how are they going to cut that, will the expensive new dedicated buses have lawnmower blades fitted underneath them.

Cambridge is one of my favourite cities, it's a beautiful place but has a most horrendous traffic problem, can't these eejits see that they are going to make it worse.

Incidentally, that particular area is the Pykie capital of the UK, especially around Cottenham, I hope that everything is well bolted down, ''Want to buy some concrete hardcore sir''.