Rethinking the Cambourne to Cambridge Route
By Anna Gazeley, owner of Coton Orchard
The Cambourne to Cambridge Busway Inquiry has drawn to a close, months of cross-examination, field visits, expert testimony and public resolve now distilled into a decision none of us can yet see. But as we wait, clarity has emerged. This was never a dispute about whether we need better transport. It was about how we build it, and what we are prepared to surrender along the way.
The scheme before the Inspectors would drive a new off-road busway through the green belt west of Cambridge, across productive farm fields, including ones in the care of Cambridge Past, Present & Future, and through the century-old orchard where owls hunt low over winter grass and summer light hangs between the trees like breath. It risks fracturing habitat networks that have grown through generations, and would narrow the great open sweep of Madingley Hill, a heritage viewscape that frames the city as skyline, spire and story all at once.
The staked out route on Sadler Farm
What the Inquiry made visible
There were weeks of documents and diagrams, but truth sharpened when feet met ground. Inspectors walked the route. Volunteers marked out stakes across the fields and along orchard rides so that the proposed busway could be seen not as inked geometry but as impact, a corridor through habitats, across hedge lines, between veteran branches that have held their shape longer than any plan on paper. What had been conceptual became immediate. Scaled. Real.
And across hearings we heard concessions that could not be ignored:
• the route begins and ends on the outskirts of both Cambourne and Cambridge
• its carbon balance remains a net emitter over its construction lifetime
• biodiversity credits cannot recreate what would be lost
• the orchard and green belt would be materially harmed
Mitigation was offered, but the cost was written into the land.
There is an alternative to build bus lanes next to the A1303
We did not object without offering a solution
Cambridge Past, Present & Future’s position has been consistent. We need better transport. We need capacity. We need reliability. But progress must not demand the erasure of landscapes that define the character and ecological resilience of Greater Cambridge.
To that end, we brought forward a workable on-road alternative — a route that uses and improves existing highway infrastructure, avoiding the orchard entirely and preserving the long horizon of Madingley Hill. A route that would be complemented by the new East West Railway which, when it comes, will connect Cambourne to Cambridge more rapidly and reliably than buses. Our proposal could be delivered with lower carbon cost, less environmental harm and stronger connectivity to where people actually travel. We did not stand against change; we stood for a better form of it.
At the end of the Inquiry, all parties were invited to submit their summing up of the evidence. You can read Cambridge Past, Present & Future’s closing statement here.
What has already been won
Whatever the Inspectors decide, something important has changed. The orchard was not an abstraction. The green belt was not an empty shape on a planning layer. The landscape has been seen, measured, walked, staked and understood. The record is now rich with ecological evidence, witness testimony and the lived knowledge of farmers, residents and experts who know this land in all weathers.
That matters. It will matter far beyond this Inquiry.
Our thanks, and our onward purpose
To everyone who wrote submissions, sat through hearings, helped plant stakes, attended site visits, gathered species data or stood in the gallery simply to bear witness, thank you. To those who donated, who shared updates, who held conversations across kitchen tables and village halls, thank you. This was not a campaign of noise, but of endurance and thoughtfulness. It showed what care looks like when acted upon.
We now wait for the Inspectors’ recommendation, but we do not wait passively. Our work continues, defending heritage, strengthening nature recovery, shaping a transport future that is both necessary and wise.
Cambourne to Cambridge can be built. It can also be built well.
And that is the line we continue to hold.
