Cavendish III

What is it?

The next iteration of the Cavendish laboratory, moving from its current site in the corner of West Cambridge Site to a new site next to Madingley Road on the western side of JJ Thomson Ave where there are currently paddocks.

Planning application

• Cavendish III is now city council planning application 17/1799/FUL and is out for consultation as of October 2017.
• The planning application incorporates some changes to JJ Thomson Ave and Madingley Road based on the West Cambridge outline planning application. The Cavendish III planning application will likely be approved long before the overall outline planning application does, but as a result, anything done as part of Cavendish III will set-in-stone certain design choices on JJ Thomson Ave and will be difficult if not impossible to change later.
• The West Cambridge outline planning application has also been updated as of October 2017. There are significant problems with the revised application, including the removal of most segregated cycling infrastructure from the street redesigns. If Cavendish III goes ahead as planned then it will rebuild JJ Thomson Ave without the segregated cycling infrastructure that was originally promised.

Consultation

• 5th July 2017 poster session. Consultation boards posted here: File:University of Cambridge Shared Facilities Hub Cavendish III Exhibition.pdf

Response Ideas

Matt:

I queried them about the driveway for the service entrance to the Cavendish III building along Madingley Road.

They estimate approximately 2-3 long vehicles per week and 20 vans per day making use of this service entrance. This is currently a badly flared but closed-off driveway opposite Conduit Head Rd. Obviously there are safety issues for people walking & cycling along Madingley Road that need to be addressed. Also, there is no right turn into this driveway and they do not plan for there to be in the future, so it will require vehicles coming from the west to enter and circle around JJ Thomson & Charles Babbage Road to get to Cavendish III during construction. Later there will be an access route from the High Cross junction area.

In addition this driveway across from Conduit Head Road will be part of a north/south cycling route that will continue from Cavendish as an off-street path south to Charles Babbage Road. Presumably the northern section is going to be shared with the service vans. But south of Cavendish III in the poster boards it is currently shown as a pair of tiny paths. Clearly there is much work to be done.

I brought up Clerk Maxwell, as the current plan is to put all the car parking into several multi-storeys, one in particular being located at the northern part of Clerk Maxwell. Their goal is to remove parking from the street and replace it with cycle lanes. Very well though, I was also curious about their plans to do something about the massively flared junction. They have not put much thought into it, supposedly, although their plans do show a set of Advance Stop Lines at Clerk Maxwell, as if they had a thought to signalise it. There had been talk of signalising that junction in the past, but the word now is that they plan to leave it as a priority junction.

I also asked if there was any plan to fix the outstanding problems with Madingley Road, especially where it passes University land. For example, at Clerk Maxwell, as we all know the south-side walking & cycling provision turns into basically nil, despite the fact that it would be on University land and there's nothing but scrub & brush there right now. In return I got a lame excuse about trying to preserve some greenery, which is all well and good, but seems to be completely upside-down on priorities: providing a decent pavement so that your students & staff don't get killed walking or cycling along Madingley Road ought to be priority number 1, and if they're looking to cut back on tarmac then look at the rather wide motor carriageway first.

Of course the 'City Deal' can throw a spanner in all of this based on what the Cambourne to Cambridge scheme turns out to be.

In addition, the University is submitting amendments to the big outline planning application so that will be more to examine shortly.