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Board gives green light for Milton Rd construction
Published 18 March 2022
Board gives green light for Milton Rd construction
Work to significantly upgrade walking, cycling and bus journeys along Milton Road will begin this spring.
The Greater Cambridge Partnership’s Executive Board yesterday (Thursday) approved the construction and traffic plans to greenlight the Milton Road project.
Construction is now due to begin later this spring with the creation of new bus lanes, active travel links and the installation of the second state-of-the-art CYCLOPS junction in Cambridge at the junction of Milton Road with Elizabeth Way and Highworth Avenue.
The £24m scheme will be built by Milestone who delivered the Histon Road scheme, and will provide faster, safer and more reliable bus and active travel journeys between Cambridge and communities to the north of the city to help cut congestion and improve air quality.
While the recent upgrade to Histon Road required one-way road closures throughout construction, two-way traffic will be maintained along Milton Road for the majority of the work to minimise disruption, with the bus lanes closed to make space for the work to be carried out safely.
Further information about the start of construction will be published by the GCP in due course. The scheme is expected to take two years to complete.
The Executive Board gave the green light to a consultation about early ideas to develop a new road hierarchy in Cambridge that could see road space reallocated to active travel and public transport.
The GCP is carrying out the first review in more than 30 years of the Cambridge road network to ensure it meets the future travel needs of people who live, work and visit the city.
The current road classification has been in place since the 1980s and a review offers the chance to change how people move around the city, including the potential reallocation of road space from private vehicles to buses and active travel. A public consultation will be held in the summer to enable people to help shape a new road hierarchy system. People would be asked to share their views on walking and cycling priority areas, bus routing, street categories and identifying potential exemption categories and requirements.
The Executive Board agreed to carry out public engagement on designs for some of the different sections of phase two of the flagship Chisholm Trail walking and cycling route in the summer. This phase would see existing infrastructure upgraded alongside the construction of new off-road active travel infrastructure to create a first-class active travel route across the city. Phase one of the flagship cycling and walking scheme - including the Abbey Chesterton Bridge and Newmarket Road underpass - was opened in December.
The GCP will also carry out public engagement on the design for each of the Greater Cambridge Greenway routes on a rolling basis starting in May/June. Work would also include environmental surveys and the next level of technical design with the Outline Business Case due to be presented to the Board in September.
Construction on the Linton Greenway is already underway as part of phase one of the Cambridge South East Transport scheme. The 12 Greenways routes will provide safer active travel links between Cambridge and surrounding towns and villag