Passenger numbers should not be sole criterion of guided bus success

Published: 3:00 PM November 23, 2011 Updated: 4:21 PM November 1, 2020

REGARDING your article about the busway traffic lights causing congestion or not, there can be little doubt that the traffic situation is much worse as a result of the lights. This became apparent when the trial of the lights started, even before the services started, but has become much worse since.

They change very frequently, and traffic backs-up in both directions for quite a distance. I have to allow an extra five minutes to get round the ring-road at weekends and at least 10 minutes at busier times – this will clearly be a disincentive to travel and use facilities in St Ives.

We live in Hemingford Grey and have now learned that it was already known that traffic would increase in our village as a result of the guided busway, but we were not told that.

Getting out of our village at the Vindis roundabout is now much more difficult at the evening rush hour as cars back up towards Victoria Terrace with the increased congestion at the roundabout and the increased rate of cut-through traffic this has caused in the village.

This is a very common topic of conversation now, so is clearly a very obvious problem to those living in and trying to travel around the area.

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When it keeps being stated that the guided bus is a great success, on what basis is this being measured? Just numbers of trips on the bus is too narrow an approach. Is it easier to travel around areas around it, has traffic reduced on the A14, is it quicker to get to Cambridge than before?

Given the cost of the scheme, the success criteria have to take into account the wider issues and not just passenger numbers, when there were many other choices for the spending of that money.