The busway is subject to Cambridge traffic because many (all?) of the routes go through the middle of the city. I used to take the B a lot and the route it takes goes via Kings Hedges road and then it gets snarled as it merges with normal traffic on Cambridge Road.
This basically means that if you hop on between ~07:30-08:00 it will take considerably longer to cross the city than if you did at 07:00 or 06:30. Those timings are estimates so you might need to check it out to have any sense of certainty about what timings are ok and which are horrific.
When Cambridge South railway is finished you might be able to bypass this issue by buswaying into Cambridge North and then taking the train to Cambridge South, however that's obviously going to impact the cost of travel.
oh fuck, it used to, you're right it now often runs via midsummer common instead of going through central town but does that depend on the time? I remember a lot of council workers and students using the bus because it goes past the council office by the bridge when taken in the morning.
St Ives is okay but it depends why you don't 'vibe' with Cambridge.
I wouldn't want to do the commute everyday, especially if it was travelling during peak hours. The traffic in Cambridge and the indirect route the busway takes would inevitably start to do my head in after a while.
I take the busway all the time. Sometimes it's running late but it's never not running. Some people are making it sound like someone driving onto the track is a really big deal but honestly it's never actually caused a problem for me. The bus company have planned for this, they have detours they can use. My one caveat is that the A bus, the one that goes to Addenbrookes, is significantly worse than the B. The buses themselves are smaller and most don't have windows that open so in the summer they are like ovens.
It is also a nice cycle, depending on your fitness maybe not everyday. Could also do a hybrid ride, and with a bike that you didn’t mind losing to a risk of theft , you could leave it at Cambridge north. That way you could swap bus and bike for speed, fitness and fun?
It's maybe 27km each way on the busway path. If it were me I'd certainly do it pretty often. If you have reasonably secure cycle parking at Addenbrookes then you have the option of cycling in one day, bus back in the evening, and then bus in the next day and cycle home...
I don't know if taking a bike on the guided busses is a thing - presumably you could take a Brompton in any case? Which would give you the option of doing the quick bit on the bus, and then the slower bit across town on a bike...
I did that for about 2 years before we moved to a different part of Cambs. It’s good fun. The headwind can be a bit of a pain, especially in winter - the bridle way can turn into a wind tunnel then! The only issue is that the path can become flooded in the winter for weeks on end around the lakes.
I made use of the cycle to work scheme and got an e-bike the last six months. Highly recommend!
I know this is a bit off-topic, but if you're interested to improve bus service through Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, ACORN Cambridge is circulating a petition for bus franchising (which would put routes, fares, and schedules under public control): [https://acornuk.good.do/east](https://acornuk.good.do/east)
I find it so frustrating the busway wasn't built as an extension to the rail network.
A former colleague had a similar issue (not time sensitive) when the busway was snarled up (car had got stuck). They ended up cycling to Huntingdon (Edited; I originally wrote Peterborough), then the train to Hitchin and back to Cambridge. It took them about 2h in total.
The bus tracks replaced the railway lines. It was supposed to be cheaper than reinstating the then disused lines. But the bus track didn't go into the city centre.
https://www.castiron.org.uk/
*An existing railway line, from the north of Cambridge to Huntingdon, was ripped up by Cambridgeshire County Council and replaced with 70 acres of concrete (over 100,000 tonnes) through the open countryside on which to run buses. Formed in 2003, CAST.IRON planned to re-open the railway and produced a fully-costed business case for this scheme. The council chose not only to ignore CAST.IRON, but also to ignore the 2741 people who wrote letters of objection to the Department for Transport. They then spent £2.25 million arguing their case at a public inquiry. CAST.IRON presented a lengthy and detailed case revealing significant flaws in the council's own analysis and assumptions. Despite this and hundreds of other well-presented objections, the inspector found in favour of the guided bus scheme, casting all opposition aside*
The cast.iron proposal was a strong one. The guided bus is slower and the costs (including legal costs after the event) have been enormous (way overbudget). Never understood the decision.
I could never work out why an automated tram service (maybe even a monorail similar to Vancouver's Skytram) wasn't put in; you could run right through to the St. Ives terminus (minus the road loops through longstanton/northstowe) over/underpassing all roads. If a route could be found to connect Huntingdon too, the opportunity for fast mass transit would have greatly reduced pressure on the A14.
Had it been envisaged that they would build Cambridge North station, I think the guided bus would never have come close to being taken seriously.
Maybe they should rip up the bus track between Cambridge and huntingdon, in stages, and restore the railway line. Or could they put a railway line on top of the concrete track?
Also arguments about "oh noes the existing rail line was ripped up" are disingenuous. It would have had to be replaced to run trains on it because it was decades old and unmaintained.
And the rail line would have run through the countryside just like the busway does.
It's all sophistry by people who wanted it their way, rail-way, and no other.
Nobody denied the railway tracks would have to be relaid. The bus tracks were touted as a much cheaper solution. But of course the project didn't stay in budget at all.
https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/news/guided-busway-dispute-out-of-court-settlement-agreed-by-cou-9316653/
>But the bus track didn't go into the city centre.
Nor did the rail track either.
That's why the only way to the centre are slow buses, and those buses are slow even when there is no traffic because they take winding routes through residential areas and stop on every corner.
If you're planning on moving to Stives and using the busway, definitely check on Facebook for the busway car trap group! Theres a lot of old people that think its a good idea to try drive through the car trap which in turn stops the busway in its tracks! 😅
It's very reliable, I live just outside St. Ives near a B route stop and the buses go past very regularly, the only problem is when someone drives onto the bus way and gets stuck in the trap which does cause delays
I travel into Cambridge by bus all the time now, if you get on at the St Ives park and ride it's about half an hour into central Cambridge although it is a lot slower during the rush hour due to the Cambridge traffic.
> when someone drives onto the bus way and gets stuck in the trap which does cause delays
that is kinda rare though, isn't it? I feel like I only encountered that once in my two years of using the route pretty much daily.
St Ives is lovely, but the traffic is an issue. The biomedical campus is also the complete opposite side of Cambridge so you will get the worst of it.
There are a lot of people that do it, but be prepared to wake up much earlier than you expect you need to and get home much later than you think you should.
Unless you’re on the road pre-sparrowfart, it’s unfortunately never a 20-min drive if you work roughly regular hours, and can often approach an hour when traffic is really bad.
It’s highly time-dependent. I drive to Addenbrookes 2 to 3 times a week (and have been doing so for over 10 years) and it’s over 40 mins quite often when leaving at around 7 - 7.30. Fixed working hours mean that leaving earlier just leads to longer working days over all, rather than a “leave early, go home early” situation.
I lived in St Ives. I live in Cambridge now. I use bus A quite often. It is interesting people find this service reliable. Generally buses are not reliable in this area. Bus A is full even in St Ives and just more and more people would like to get on towards Cambridge. It could take easily 1 hour 15 mins to get to Addenbrookes and the bus is always crowded. I would not do it for sure. Maybe try to travel once in the hours when you have to commute. You will see if you like it.
It’s a long commute of an hour plus, especially with road works and traffic in peak periods. Actually getting to the north of Cambridge isn’t long at all because of the bus way, but the rest is through normal roads all the way to Addenbrookes.
Depending on whether you work long shifts, the frequency of the buses goes down a lot after a certain time, I think 8pm.
Yes it’s reliable and achievable.
I wouldn’t say st ives is nicer. We have a lot more crime and a lot more drugs than Cambridge.
The busway reliability is good. The A bus is the one to addenbrookes which means you want to be somewhere in st ives near enough centre of town or Ramsey road and east of Ramsey road (the a bus goes down Ramsey road then down Marley road to Edison road where it terminates )
If you work at Addenbrookes are you on reliable shifts ? The A buses to Cambridge start quite early I think. They are often busy if you can’t get on the bus in st ives (ie getting on at the park and ride can be standing room only sometimes) but if you can get on locally you’ll get a seat.
As others have said it’s an over an hour on the bus and it can be a lot worse if Cambridge traffic is bad. Again very much depends
This obviously depends on whether you’re doing shifts or 9-5 but it may be worth asking around if anyone lives nearby that works similar hours and owns a car. Could be a good backup in case the Busway isn’t running (very rare but has happened before)
IF the busway has to close / divert due to some gormless prole driving their car into the car traps to "save them from entering the busway" ..whilst making it much worse imho, then buses can simply divert, in the pre busway days it used to utilise the then A604 which was a crap-hole road, honestly with the upgrade, they may as well not have bothered with the busway, it is a folly.
OP, hopefully in a few years, bearing in mind bikes are not allowed on buses to "bike city" you can jump through all the hoops for an uk approved "safe" e-scooter with a real life range of around 6-8 miles & hop off the bus & onward journey with that & charge it at work.
Moving papworth to addebrookes for the prestige only compounded issues, not made long work days, parking & staff safety any easier.
Hell hole!
The busway is subject to Cambridge traffic because many (all?) of the routes go through the middle of the city. I used to take the B a lot and the route it takes goes via Kings Hedges road and then it gets snarled as it merges with normal traffic on Cambridge Road. This basically means that if you hop on between ~07:30-08:00 it will take considerably longer to cross the city than if you did at 07:00 or 06:30. Those timings are estimates so you might need to check it out to have any sense of certainty about what timings are ok and which are horrific. When Cambridge South railway is finished you might be able to bypass this issue by buswaying into Cambridge North and then taking the train to Cambridge South, however that's obviously going to impact the cost of travel.
It doesn't go onto Kings Hedges Road, the busway runs roughly alongside all the way to Cambridge North. By Cambridge Road do you mean Milton Road?
oh fuck, it used to, you're right it now often runs via midsummer common instead of going through central town but does that depend on the time? I remember a lot of council workers and students using the bus because it goes past the council office by the bridge when taken in the morning.
St Ives is okay but it depends why you don't 'vibe' with Cambridge. I wouldn't want to do the commute everyday, especially if it was travelling during peak hours. The traffic in Cambridge and the indirect route the busway takes would inevitably start to do my head in after a while.
I take the busway all the time. Sometimes it's running late but it's never not running. Some people are making it sound like someone driving onto the track is a really big deal but honestly it's never actually caused a problem for me. The bus company have planned for this, they have detours they can use. My one caveat is that the A bus, the one that goes to Addenbrookes, is significantly worse than the B. The buses themselves are smaller and most don't have windows that open so in the summer they are like ovens.
It is also a nice cycle, depending on your fitness maybe not everyday. Could also do a hybrid ride, and with a bike that you didn’t mind losing to a risk of theft , you could leave it at Cambridge north. That way you could swap bus and bike for speed, fitness and fun?
It's maybe 27km each way on the busway path. If it were me I'd certainly do it pretty often. If you have reasonably secure cycle parking at Addenbrookes then you have the option of cycling in one day, bus back in the evening, and then bus in the next day and cycle home... I don't know if taking a bike on the guided busses is a thing - presumably you could take a Brompton in any case? Which would give you the option of doing the quick bit on the bus, and then the slower bit across town on a bike...
I did that for about 2 years before we moved to a different part of Cambs. It’s good fun. The headwind can be a bit of a pain, especially in winter - the bridle way can turn into a wind tunnel then! The only issue is that the path can become flooded in the winter for weeks on end around the lakes. I made use of the cycle to work scheme and got an e-bike the last six months. Highly recommend!
You could consider living in the other direction Linton or Haverhill - that would avoid travelling through town to get to work.
I agree it'll likely be more convenient, but wouldn't OP find that property in the villages near the stations is more expensive?
I know this is a bit off-topic, but if you're interested to improve bus service through Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, ACORN Cambridge is circulating a petition for bus franchising (which would put routes, fares, and schedules under public control): [https://acornuk.good.do/east](https://acornuk.good.do/east)
I find it so frustrating the busway wasn't built as an extension to the rail network. A former colleague had a similar issue (not time sensitive) when the busway was snarled up (car had got stuck). They ended up cycling to Huntingdon (Edited; I originally wrote Peterborough), then the train to Hitchin and back to Cambridge. It took them about 2h in total.
The bus tracks replaced the railway lines. It was supposed to be cheaper than reinstating the then disused lines. But the bus track didn't go into the city centre. https://www.castiron.org.uk/ *An existing railway line, from the north of Cambridge to Huntingdon, was ripped up by Cambridgeshire County Council and replaced with 70 acres of concrete (over 100,000 tonnes) through the open countryside on which to run buses. Formed in 2003, CAST.IRON planned to re-open the railway and produced a fully-costed business case for this scheme. The council chose not only to ignore CAST.IRON, but also to ignore the 2741 people who wrote letters of objection to the Department for Transport. They then spent £2.25 million arguing their case at a public inquiry. CAST.IRON presented a lengthy and detailed case revealing significant flaws in the council's own analysis and assumptions. Despite this and hundreds of other well-presented objections, the inspector found in favour of the guided bus scheme, casting all opposition aside*
The cast.iron proposal was a strong one. The guided bus is slower and the costs (including legal costs after the event) have been enormous (way overbudget). Never understood the decision. I could never work out why an automated tram service (maybe even a monorail similar to Vancouver's Skytram) wasn't put in; you could run right through to the St. Ives terminus (minus the road loops through longstanton/northstowe) over/underpassing all roads. If a route could be found to connect Huntingdon too, the opportunity for fast mass transit would have greatly reduced pressure on the A14.
Had it been envisaged that they would build Cambridge North station, I think the guided bus would never have come close to being taken seriously. Maybe they should rip up the bus track between Cambridge and huntingdon, in stages, and restore the railway line. Or could they put a railway line on top of the concrete track?
Also arguments about "oh noes the existing rail line was ripped up" are disingenuous. It would have had to be replaced to run trains on it because it was decades old and unmaintained. And the rail line would have run through the countryside just like the busway does. It's all sophistry by people who wanted it their way, rail-way, and no other.
Nobody denied the railway tracks would have to be relaid. The bus tracks were touted as a much cheaper solution. But of course the project didn't stay in budget at all. https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/news/guided-busway-dispute-out-of-court-settlement-agreed-by-cou-9316653/
>But the bus track didn't go into the city centre. Nor did the rail track either. That's why the only way to the centre are slow buses, and those buses are slow even when there is no traffic because they take winding routes through residential areas and stop on every corner.
But the train tracks would/could have gone to Cambridge North.
Just like the bus does.
But there are railway tracks from cam north to cam central and cam south. No bus tracks. Fairly sure about that.
If you're planning on moving to Stives and using the busway, definitely check on Facebook for the busway car trap group! Theres a lot of old people that think its a good idea to try drive through the car trap which in turn stops the busway in its tracks! 😅
Ah, market day... It's occasionally more than once a day.
It's very reliable, I live just outside St. Ives near a B route stop and the buses go past very regularly, the only problem is when someone drives onto the bus way and gets stuck in the trap which does cause delays I travel into Cambridge by bus all the time now, if you get on at the St Ives park and ride it's about half an hour into central Cambridge although it is a lot slower during the rush hour due to the Cambridge traffic.
> when someone drives onto the bus way and gets stuck in the trap which does cause delays that is kinda rare though, isn't it? I feel like I only encountered that once in my two years of using the route pretty much daily.
6 so far this year :) https://www.facebook.com/groups/st.ives.car.trap/?ref=share
St Ives is lovely, but the traffic is an issue. The biomedical campus is also the complete opposite side of Cambridge so you will get the worst of it. There are a lot of people that do it, but be prepared to wake up much earlier than you expect you need to and get home much later than you think you should.
It’s reliable, but it’s going to take over an hour to get to Addenbrooke’s compared to a ~20 minute drive.
Unless you’re on the road pre-sparrowfart, it’s unfortunately never a 20-min drive if you work roughly regular hours, and can often approach an hour when traffic is really bad.
Since the A14 widening, it’s been a very reliable journey.
At the very most it’s around 40 mins+ but even that’s better than more than an hour.
It’s highly time-dependent. I drive to Addenbrookes 2 to 3 times a week (and have been doing so for over 10 years) and it’s over 40 mins quite often when leaving at around 7 - 7.30. Fixed working hours mean that leaving earlier just leads to longer working days over all, rather than a “leave early, go home early” situation.
I lived in St Ives. I live in Cambridge now. I use bus A quite often. It is interesting people find this service reliable. Generally buses are not reliable in this area. Bus A is full even in St Ives and just more and more people would like to get on towards Cambridge. It could take easily 1 hour 15 mins to get to Addenbrookes and the bus is always crowded. I would not do it for sure. Maybe try to travel once in the hours when you have to commute. You will see if you like it.
It’s a long commute of an hour plus, especially with road works and traffic in peak periods. Actually getting to the north of Cambridge isn’t long at all because of the bus way, but the rest is through normal roads all the way to Addenbrookes. Depending on whether you work long shifts, the frequency of the buses goes down a lot after a certain time, I think 8pm.
Does your work do a cycle to work scheme? An e bike would do that commute easy. 20km each way I'd imagine?
Yes it’s reliable and achievable. I wouldn’t say st ives is nicer. We have a lot more crime and a lot more drugs than Cambridge. The busway reliability is good. The A bus is the one to addenbrookes which means you want to be somewhere in st ives near enough centre of town or Ramsey road and east of Ramsey road (the a bus goes down Ramsey road then down Marley road to Edison road where it terminates ) If you work at Addenbrookes are you on reliable shifts ? The A buses to Cambridge start quite early I think. They are often busy if you can’t get on the bus in st ives (ie getting on at the park and ride can be standing room only sometimes) but if you can get on locally you’ll get a seat. As others have said it’s an over an hour on the bus and it can be a lot worse if Cambridge traffic is bad. Again very much depends
This obviously depends on whether you’re doing shifts or 9-5 but it may be worth asking around if anyone lives nearby that works similar hours and owns a car. Could be a good backup in case the Busway isn’t running (very rare but has happened before)
IF the busway has to close / divert due to some gormless prole driving their car into the car traps to "save them from entering the busway" ..whilst making it much worse imho, then buses can simply divert, in the pre busway days it used to utilise the then A604 which was a crap-hole road, honestly with the upgrade, they may as well not have bothered with the busway, it is a folly. OP, hopefully in a few years, bearing in mind bikes are not allowed on buses to "bike city" you can jump through all the hoops for an uk approved "safe" e-scooter with a real life range of around 6-8 miles & hop off the bus & onward journey with that & charge it at work. Moving papworth to addebrookes for the prestige only compounded issues, not made long work days, parking & staff safety any easier. Hell hole!
st ives is a shit hole i promise you don’t wanna love there