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.

Draft objection

West Cambridge Active Travel (WCAT) is a grassroots organisation for the promotion of active travel on and around the West Cambridge Site. We object to the proposed designs for JJ Thomson Avenue and JJ Thomson Gardens contained in 17/1799/FUL as they have significant problems and require substantial redesign. Our preference would be for the plans for JJ Thomson Avenue and JJ Thomson Gardens to be split off from the application for the building, with the condition that the works are agreed and constructed before occupation of Cavendish III. We have discussed our objections with the University and expect that some of them will be addressed in a later submission.

It is intended that the population of the West Cambridge Site will grow substantially over the next few years while the number of cars travelling to the site remains constant or decreases. To achieve this a substantial increase in the proportion and number of people arriving by cycle, walking, or public transport will be required. This means that substantial numbers of people who presently consider such means of travel to be inconvenient or unsafe must be provided with infrastructure of sufficient quality that they change their mind. The plans for JJ Thomson Avenue, JJ Thomson Gardens, and improvements to the surrounding transport network fall short of fixing the present problems on and around the site, do not follow modern design standards, and do not provide sufficiently good quality infrastructure to deliver the required modal shift. In addition to this the move to multi-story car parks and the construction of more buildings deeper into the site will increase the volume cycling and walking traffic within the site.

The earlier designs for JJ Thomson Avenue (in 16/1134/OUT), while having some problems, were better than the present designs and we object to the council officers forcing the University to alter their plans such that they are no longer a viable solution.

To encourage walking and cycling on and around the West Cambridge Site it is necessary for this to be a stress free, enjoyable, safe and convenient process. Shared use paths do not provide such a facility except in extremely low traffic conditions. The bursty nature of undergraduate travel patterns, where whole lecture theatres full of students arrive in 5-10 minute windows, means that the routes on and around the site regularly experience extremely high traffic conditions under which shared use paths are entirely inappropriate. The move of the Cavendish Laboratory to the Cavendish III site will place additional pressure on the WCS's internal links as the main flow of undergraduates from the Coton Path will now travel through the site as the Cavendish will no longer be connected directly to the Coton Path. The existing site links are already over capacity at peak times.

1) To deliver a transport network that works on the WCS people walking, cycling, and using motor vehicles must be kept segregated as far as possible. The original plans for JJ Thomson Avenue in 16/1134/OUT proposed segregated walking and cycling along both sides of the road. This is necessary to meet the capacity and ease of use requirements for these paths. The present plans for a shared use path will have neither sufficient capacity, nor sufficient desirability of use, to meet the needs of the site.

2) The plans for the path through JJ Thomson Garden include a 6m wide shared use path. While this will be sufficient when the path does not go anywhere, as is the case before the Vet School is demolished, it will be entirely insufficient when The Green is completed and it becomes a through route. The planning application should contain a commitment to turn the path into a segregated walking and cycling route, or to provide a separate cycling route, during later phases of development.

3) The crossing of JJ Thomson Avenue at the junction with Madingley Road is poorly designed and will not be attractive to use. The central refuge is too small, the crossing is staggered, through motor traffic has priority and the highly flared junction means that this traffic is moving at speed. This makes using this crossing dangerous and unattractive. The University has told us that it intends to bring forward an improved design for this crossing.

4) The designs for the cycle parking around the Cavendish are generally good but some of the aisles are narrower than the 1.8m minimum width and so will be difficult to use and the effective number of cycle parking spaces will be reduced as a result.

5) The crossing of Charles Babbage Road at the junction of JJ Thomson Avenue is not proposed to be improved as part of these plans. However, cycling and walking across the road at this point should have priority as this through traffic is presently much higher than the traffic on Charles Babbage Road and this will be even more the case when the Cavendish II site is closed and people are travelling to Cavendish III.

Requirements for JJ Thomson Avenue

Motor traffic, people walking, and people cycling need to be kept separate as far as possible on JJ Thomson Avenue and where their paths cross, people walking should have clear priority over those cycling and those in motor vehicles, and people cycling should have clear priority over those in motor vehicles. The proposed plans call for cycling on the road, an admission that the shared use paths are inadequate, but this is not safe and attractive due to the regular large, heavy, and hard buses which do not mix well with small, soft, squishy cyclists. The ordering of priorities is best practice in general but in particularly required on this site where motor traffic needs to be deprioritised to meet modal shift goals. High volumes of cycling and walking traffic are expected on JJ Thomson Avenue. The proposed Cavendish III building contains 520 seats of lecture theatre capacity and with 80% of students arriving by cycle if 90% of these seats were in use simultaneously for lectures then 370 cyclists might arrive in the proceeding 10 minutes, equivalent to 2,250 per hour. The adjacent proposed Shared Facilities Hub has 280 seats of further lecture theatre capacity equivalent to a further 1,200 per hour rate and the William Gates Building opposite contributes a further 389 seats equivalent to 1,680 per hour. Hence, JJ Thomson Avenue should support a peak hourly rate of cyclists of 5,000/hour. This level of cycling precludes the use of on road cycling for 20mph roads according to IAN 195/16 Table 2.2.2 as it is equivalent to a daly rate of over 5000/hour, segregated cycle tracks must be used. Table 2.2.11 from IAN195/16 indicates that the desirable minimum width for a 2-way cycleway with over 150 cyclists per hour is 4000mm and the absolute minimum is 3500mm. Additionally it specifies in Table 2.2.11.1 that a vertical feature above 600 mm high at the edge of the path requires an additional 500mm of width. Some sections of the paths along JJ Thomson Avenue are lined with hedges resulting in this additional width being necessary if the cyclepath is adjacent to the hedge.

This leads to the requirement for a 2000mm footway segregated from a 3500mm cycleway along each side of JJ Thomson Avenue, a total width of 5500mm. This should be level separated as per Figure 2.3.2.1 of IAN195/16 with a forgiving Cambridge Kerb between them. The cycleway should be surfaced with flat red tarmac.

The present carriageway is 7300mm wide, only 6100mm is required and the width should be reduced to this level to encourage drivers to comply with the 20mph speed limit. There is presently a persistent speeding problem on JJ Thomson Avenue. The 1200mm of removed width could be switched from one side of the road to the other over the length of the road (though not near crossings) so as to create a horizontal traffic calming effect.

The present paths along the side of JJ Thomson Avenue are 3000mm wide and 5500mm is required (or 6000 if the cycleway is adjacent to the hedge). This represents an increase in width of 2500mm. This is likely to require the existing hedges to be moved further away from the carriageway on some sections as well as a narrowing of the verge. The net increase in hard surfacing (2500*2-1200=3800mm) means that permeable paving may be required on the pedestrian section for drainage purposes.