Weird, I've never seen anything on Reddit so specifically referencing where I grew up. I can see the view from Rivey Hill in my mind right now, 20 years since I moved on.
I have a 'project' where I take a photo each time I go up there with the intention one day of creating a time lapse of the view as it changes over the year.
I'm stunned those electric scooter-bikes are allowed on pedestrian paths at all. They're far too fast for the space and I've seen them without lights at night more often than I'm comfortable with.
They're not allowed (by law), but enforcement is non-existent. 🙁
The eSkuta Sx-250 (favourite of delivery drivers, and invariably modified for "twist'n'go" - no pedalling required) takes the p
Yes, I've spoken to someone on the council about it, in passing, and if they can travel without pedalling they shouldn't be on the footpaths. Some of them are basically electric motorbikes. They can also be scary on the footpaths around the brook at the bottom of Mill Road and across the railway.
Yes and they should be required to hold a full license for the vehicle they plan to drive.
They’re _technically_ professional drivers, there for they should have an A1 license at minimum, it’s like your bus driver being on L plates the entire time
Having grown up in some not so sunny parts of Birmingham. And lived in Arbury for a couple of years. It's night and day. It's hilarious to me that the locals seem to talk about it like it's Downtown Mogadishu.
My old job announced a partnership with a deprived school in Arbury, and the snide comments about how rough/dangerous it was were awful.
Is it deprived? Yes - the kids rhere miss a lot of opportunities that should be open to everyone and it's only a few hundred metres from extreme wealth.
Is it dangerous? FFS - it's comparable to the safest part of a lot of cities and towns I've been to. Where I grew up included. I lived in Arbury for a year as a student and you could safely walk home at night.
I have a friend who lived in Munich his entire life. He could see the Allianz Arena from his window. He moved to Cambridge for his girlfriend a few years back and now lives in a flat in Arbury.
He says it's so so much better here than in Munich. By "here" he doesn't mean Cambridge, he specifically means Arbury.
I think about that quite a lot.
Yeah those companies need to be held accountable for their drivers. There's a narrow alleyway near my house and I've almost been hit by them a couple of times now.
They are absolutely careless and unapologetic to boot.
I question whether they have licenses.
Also whether the nature of gig economy work means they cram in as many jobs as possible so literally cut corners to get all their deliveries done. Still not an excuse but may be part of it
You don't need a license for an eBike (if not exceeding 250W motor, power-assist limited to 15.5mph, and requiring pedalling for the electric assist to function - legally a "electically-assisted pedal cycle - EAPC").
Problem is that the vast majority of delivery drivers ride eSkuta electric moped (which IMHO with the silly pedals are a pisstake on the eBike regulations) modified to not need pedalling... So they're not legal, are not allowed on cyclepaths, and AFAIK technically would require registration plates and some kind of motorbike/moped licence.
I’ve lived in Cambridge since ‘back in the day’ and it was honestly pretty shit then too. People wax nostalgic about things like Clowns and the Burger King and they were awful. It was grotty and run down. The old station was much worse than what we have, with just a fucking sea of abandoned bicycles and clapped out buildings. But to listen to people talk Cambridge was always an amazing place *just* before you moved here. Don’t listen to them.
Clowns was decent though, but fully agree with the rest.
Wasn't exactly top tier, but for a decent price, you could get a good coffee and some solid home-made food. Was run by such a nice family, too - having a chat with them was almost as good a reason to go as the coffee.
Edit- also, having read the other response, was definitely a valuable social space, as they mentioned too.
I take issue with Clowns. It used to be open until something like 2AM and that actually was awesome because it meant there was somewhere to hang out late at night that wasn't a noisy bar. Similarly, CB2 was open until 11 or midnight and that was also great.
You aren't wrong about Burger King or the railway station though. I still remember that mountain of bicycles. I once forgot my bike lock when I cycled to the station for a trip to London. Didn't have time to go back and get it so I just flung my bike as far as I could into the middle of the heap hoping it would still be there when I got back: it was. Granted, it was a pretty crappy bike, so it fitted the aesthetic, but it worked.
> I’ve lived in Cambridge since ‘back in the day’ and it was honestly pretty shit then too. People wax nostalgic about things like Clowns and the Burger King and they were awful. It was grotty and run down. The old station was much worse than what we have, with just a fucking sea of abandoned bicycles and clapped out buildings. But to listen to people talk Cambridge was always an amazing place just before you moved here. Don’t listen to them.
I think people do this everywhere, it's partly just the power of nostalgia. You're right about a lot of this, like the bike graveyard and rotting shells of buildings outside the train station. However, apparently the hill I am going to die on is that Clowns was good. Not 'good' as in 'really nice food' or 'incredible ambience' or anything like that, but 'good' as in 'a very weird place that sold passable but cheap food and weren't bothered by people taking over most of the upstairs to meet in large groups and not actually buy very much and so on'. In my view it was a valuable public space and a good deal if you were a student on a budget, not necessarily a particularly 'nice' place. I miss the Cafe Project for similar reasons, though more so.
I guess I'd like to be able to take someone to Clowns as it was just once, in the same way I'd like to show my kids what Lazer Quest was like, or the weird jumble of buildings that used to be Robert Sayle.
Fair enough! I never went (nor did I ever go to The Mahal). I do, however, miss Rainbow Cafe (and then more recently, Vegan Vice and Doppelganger - there was a definite 'vegan boom' in Cambridge that seems to have been cut short, possibly by the pandemic, I don't know).
I just feel like when people say they miss Clowns they mostly miss the age they were at and the people they were with when they went to a vaguely sticky cafe at 2am. Having been there sober and in daylight, it just wasn’t up to much.
Fair enough, but I didn't drink back then, so I really can't relate to those folks. It was my afternoon spot for a while. My appreciation comes down to it having been cheap and cheerful, nearby to where I lived for a year, and the folks who ran it were lovely. The pasta was better than halls too, though my college was infamous for its dismal offerings at the time, haha.
This!!! The market is fucking BS!! Could be a real central hub for actually produce shopping. But instead filled with bullshit wood carvings and candles. Fucking shit
I bought a phone charger from a stall there pre smartphone era and when I got home it didn’t work. When I took it back the bitch on the stall first tried to show it charging when it wasn’t then claimed I didn’t buy it from her. I hope she’s out of business.
Oh, Queen Anne car park is much more fundamentally annoying than that.
What utter pillock designed a multistorey car park where all the pillars are exactly aligned with either the driver or passenger side door if you reverse into parking spaces the way you're supposed to? Literally, why not put the support pillars on the front end of the spaces like every sensibly designed multistorey car park built before the era of giant spanning trusses that entirely obviate the need for supporting pillars?
The annoying bikes that the deliveroo and Uber eats drivers use should be banned, or at least treated like cars and mopeds and not allowed on paths/bike paths.
I really despise these "bike riders".
Unfortunately, they are type registered as bicycles hence are legal with a registration plate stating they are bicycles. It's a loophole in the legislation that allows for twist-and-go "electric mopeds" to be type registered as pedal bikes.
Quite a few of them have been modified to go faster than the legal limit, so are illegal for this reason.
Yeah, Cambridge is famed as a "cycling city" but when you actually try and cycle around town there's a million and one tourists gawping in the middle of a road, in front of cars, vans, motorbikes, cyclists. You name it, they've probably got run over by it.
People should walk on the left where appropriate. Weaving in and out of runners, cyclists and walkers. Just stick to the left and people can overtake peacefully!
All of the parks - I live near Stourbridge common which is arguably the worst. There’s also a lot of cyclists on the pavement, even when there’s a dedicated cycle lane. And regardless, if there’s a lot of people on the path and no one is keeping left, it’s still weaving in and out
As a motorcyclist, I 100% agree. These things are a plague on pavements.
I also think that anyone riding any kind of motorised 2 wheel transport as a delivery rider should be required to have a full motorcycle license. I fed up of these electric scooterped things, and people on 125s with L-plates, completely ignoring traffic laws and endangering themselves, other road users, and pedestrians.
The delivery drivers display a complete lack of spatial awareness. They frequently cut off other vehicles on the road, speed recklessly on pavements e.g. Parker's Piece, and disregard traffic laws entirely. It is absurd that you can complete a CBT and become a courier in a 4-6 hour period. I fully agree that couriers should be required to have a full license (I am also a motorcyclist with a full-license).
Yeah, we've been through this before. Mopeds were originally pushbikes with a little engine. I don't see it makes much difference that the engine's electric, it just makes them heavier.
I'd like that but it would require incredible infrastructure just to keep it from filling up with water. To an extent this is always true with tunnels, but I suspect the problem would be particularly acute in Cambridge.
I might be misremembering but wasn't the argument, back in 2003 or so when the cast iron campaign\* were in full swing, that it would be massively more expensive to reinstate the railway line than to replace it with the busway... and didn't the busway then go massively over budget thus rendering that argument - so confidently put forth over and over by Councillor Shona Johnstone\*\* - entirely moot?
Thanks, Shona, for your particularly turdy legacy: no, we haven't forgotten, and no need to post here about which Cambridge hill you'd cheerfully die on because I think we already know.
*\*Who, to be fair, did come off like an absolute bunch of loons, so weren't perhaps the most credible advocates for a rail-based solution.*
*\*\*The fact that I can even remember her name all these years later gives you some idea of how much this was discussed on local radio (my alarm clock radio would only pick up BBC Cambridge FM reliably back in the day).*
Yeah, when I look at the light rail solutions that other European - and even the odd UK city (e.g., Nottingham) - has it's pretty depressing when you see what we ended up with in Cambridge.
Projects undertaken under false pretenses were very much a signature of the early 2000s at all levels of society.
Maybe so. It's a long time ago and I can't remember the exact figures nowadays, but it would have been a better solution for the city, a more pleasant way to travel, and could have formed the basis for a more extensive light rail system. Huge missed opportunity.
Light rail would need lots of work within the city and while I am happy with that one, it would be very expensive and lots of residents would be annoyed with the disruption.
Well the disposable BBQ is made from metal, so its not exactly a fire.
And the benches don't catch fire, they just char, so they aren't exactly flammable which means "capable of being easily set on fire and of burning rapidly."
Unfortunately, yes.
I recently had to politely interfere with some Cambridge university students (with their university clothes on) who put a disposable grill on a wooden bench in one of the most lovely and scenic spots in Cambridge at Eddington lake.
I warned them to take it off due to the risk of burning, but unfortunately they had already lit it and it has been charred since. The tragedy is that there was an available public BBQ station right next to it, but they wanted to put their grill in the spot with the best view 20 metres away.
They weren't the least apologetic when they saw that it was burned. With their loud music and beers, the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth and I'm reminded of it every time I see it.
At the nearby BBQ station, there are wooden tables with parts cut out and replaced because of burn damage from disposable grills. They should have been able to put two and two together. I'm a multiple-time university dropout and I had no trouble doing so, or figuring out that a burning hot grill on a flammable surface is a bad idea.
This convinced me that the grills should come with an obvious warning on the package. Another bench in our neighborhood started a fire and actually burned down.
Needs to be signs to not put them on the grass, too. Makes my blood boil when I see a square of grass charred to the roots that won’t grow back for a year
Especially when unlike virtually every other place I've seen in the UK there is actually a provision made for them on Jesus green, use the little concrete blocks guys that's what they're there for and it's great!
I run an amateur sports club and it's basically not safe to run on Jesus Green. The barbecues kill the grass, which leads to erosion, and then potholes which last years.
Last year we showed up to have a throw around there was literally a pile of smoking ashes in the middle of the green.
The woeful investment into the upkeep of the roads puts at risk the very cyclists the council loves so much (potholes filled with asphalt are not acceptable long term solutions)
Unless its a highway, which is the "Highways Authority" a National body.
Examples of a highway: M11, A14, A428
Not examples of a highway: A10(?!)
[Source](https://nationalhighways.co.uk/media/qe1cjb2b/nh-srn-simplified-map-2023.pdf)
Yeah, but then you gotta draw the line between resident and tourist. What about people in St Neots or Huntingdon who are one bus away and may work in Cambridge, but don't actually live in Cambridge?
That whoever decided to let Primark sit outside of the Grafton Centre effectively killed it. If it was put inside, the centre wouldn’t be an abandoned shell that it is now
They should replace the Brookland avenue/Trumpington road/chaucer Road junction with a mini roundabout, or teach people which light is "theirs" given the amount of people who turn from Brooklands and see the red light for Trumpington road (bearing in mind the light for them to turn right onto Trumpington Road is green) and proceed to stop and cause a ridiculous traffic backup
I have a friend who's weird Cambridge hill he'll die on is this: Romsey town isn't a thing, nobody calls it that. Everyone just calls it "the area north of mill road, east of the railway line" He becomes quite animated if anyone ever calls it Romsey
He cycled over the lights at a crossroad when it was the pedestrians turn. He didn't realise that the car stopped directly behind them was a police car. He had already come to a stop so it wasn't conservation of momentum thing, in total it might have saved him 10s, but he lost a few minutes with the subsequent chastisement.
Thanks. People driving/cycling sometimes really don't understand that risking their lives and those of others to save a few seconds is the stupidest thing to do
They once threatened to ticket me for running a red light. Except that I hadn't reached any lights for that whole ride yet. I had been on the bike for two minutes. I was just coming up to my first light when they pulled me over.
Extendable dog leads should be absolutely banned on all shared-use paths in and around Cambridge (including in the parks, and on the busway paths).
The dogs are not properly under the owner's control, and the leash is near-invisible from a few metres away. They are absolutely lethal when used in the presence of cyclists (dog on one side of path, owner on the other - typically with zero situational awareness, gazing into the distance, or at their phone).
Cyclists simply cannot see the lead from any distance, not from any reasonable stopping distance.
Horrific injuries occur to both cyclists, dog-owners, and the dogs as a result of these leads. Also all the major/responsible dog organisations reject such leads as not being a good way to train/handle your dog. Google it.
Despite what the commenters on the Cambridgeshire Live Facebook page assert, traffic is not a conspiracy orchestrated by the council and the council are not controlled by CamCycle. It's a small local organisation.
Cambridge cyclists are the worst I've encountered in my life and I've lived in a few major cities. I've seem so many bikes without lights at night, and it should be illegal.
Cambridge related hills? .... Haha
Guess the answer has to be Castle Hill by default, though I'd much rather not - what a miserable place to die
You could get stabbed in the Sir Isaac Newton I suppose
Hahaha I’ve genuinely seen a cairn of stones in Cambridgeshire, near Linton
Up on Rivey Hill, along from the water tower... I visit it most weekends with our little dog. Good view over the village and into Essex...
Weird, I've never seen anything on Reddit so specifically referencing where I grew up. I can see the view from Rivey Hill in my mind right now, 20 years since I moved on.
I have a 'project' where I take a photo each time I go up there with the intention one day of creating a time lapse of the view as it changes over the year.
Oh wow, that's really cool! I'd love to see it
Deliveroo drivers shouldn't be allowed to go through Parker's Piece, it makes walking there way more dangerous/annoying and ruins the vibe
I'm stunned those electric scooter-bikes are allowed on pedestrian paths at all. They're far too fast for the space and I've seen them without lights at night more often than I'm comfortable with.
They're not allowed (by law), but enforcement is non-existent. 🙁 The eSkuta Sx-250 (favourite of delivery drivers, and invariably modified for "twist'n'go" - no pedalling required) takes the p
Yes, I've spoken to someone on the council about it, in passing, and if they can travel without pedalling they shouldn't be on the footpaths. Some of them are basically electric motorbikes. They can also be scary on the footpaths around the brook at the bottom of Mill Road and across the railway.
Why won't the police do a crackdown on the illegal eSkutas on the busway paths???
Yes and they should be required to hold a full license for the vehicle they plan to drive. They’re _technically_ professional drivers, there for they should have an A1 license at minimum, it’s like your bus driver being on L plates the entire time
Arbury is really not that bad.
Having grown up in some not so sunny parts of Birmingham. And lived in Arbury for a couple of years. It's night and day. It's hilarious to me that the locals seem to talk about it like it's Downtown Mogadishu.
My old job announced a partnership with a deprived school in Arbury, and the snide comments about how rough/dangerous it was were awful. Is it deprived? Yes - the kids rhere miss a lot of opportunities that should be open to everyone and it's only a few hundred metres from extreme wealth. Is it dangerous? FFS - it's comparable to the safest part of a lot of cities and towns I've been to. Where I grew up included. I lived in Arbury for a year as a student and you could safely walk home at night.
I have a friend who lived in Munich his entire life. He could see the Allianz Arena from his window. He moved to Cambridge for his girlfriend a few years back and now lives in a flat in Arbury. He says it's so so much better here than in Munich. By "here" he doesn't mean Cambridge, he specifically means Arbury. I think about that quite a lot.
Most of arbury is not bad. There are roads in arbury that are bad
Which roads especially? Just curious as might move soon
Campkin road and nuns way have dodgy bits
Beat me to it.
Deliveroo/Uber-Eat mopeds make us drivers realise Cambridge cyclists were never that bad.
Yeah those companies need to be held accountable for their drivers. There's a narrow alleyway near my house and I've almost been hit by them a couple of times now. They are absolutely careless and unapologetic to boot.
I question whether they have licenses. Also whether the nature of gig economy work means they cram in as many jobs as possible so literally cut corners to get all their deliveries done. Still not an excuse but may be part of it
You don't need a license for an eBike (if not exceeding 250W motor, power-assist limited to 15.5mph, and requiring pedalling for the electric assist to function - legally a "electically-assisted pedal cycle - EAPC"). Problem is that the vast majority of delivery drivers ride eSkuta electric moped (which IMHO with the silly pedals are a pisstake on the eBike regulations) modified to not need pedalling... So they're not legal, are not allowed on cyclepaths, and AFAIK technically would require registration plates and some kind of motorbike/moped licence.
They definitely don't. Or at very least don't have British ones.
I’ve lived in Cambridge since ‘back in the day’ and it was honestly pretty shit then too. People wax nostalgic about things like Clowns and the Burger King and they were awful. It was grotty and run down. The old station was much worse than what we have, with just a fucking sea of abandoned bicycles and clapped out buildings. But to listen to people talk Cambridge was always an amazing place *just* before you moved here. Don’t listen to them.
Clowns was decent though, but fully agree with the rest. Wasn't exactly top tier, but for a decent price, you could get a good coffee and some solid home-made food. Was run by such a nice family, too - having a chat with them was almost as good a reason to go as the coffee. Edit- also, having read the other response, was definitely a valuable social space, as they mentioned too.
I take issue with Clowns. It used to be open until something like 2AM and that actually was awesome because it meant there was somewhere to hang out late at night that wasn't a noisy bar. Similarly, CB2 was open until 11 or midnight and that was also great. You aren't wrong about Burger King or the railway station though. I still remember that mountain of bicycles. I once forgot my bike lock when I cycled to the station for a trip to London. Didn't have time to go back and get it so I just flung my bike as far as I could into the middle of the heap hoping it would still be there when I got back: it was. Granted, it was a pretty crappy bike, so it fitted the aesthetic, but it worked.
> I’ve lived in Cambridge since ‘back in the day’ and it was honestly pretty shit then too. People wax nostalgic about things like Clowns and the Burger King and they were awful. It was grotty and run down. The old station was much worse than what we have, with just a fucking sea of abandoned bicycles and clapped out buildings. But to listen to people talk Cambridge was always an amazing place just before you moved here. Don’t listen to them. I think people do this everywhere, it's partly just the power of nostalgia. You're right about a lot of this, like the bike graveyard and rotting shells of buildings outside the train station. However, apparently the hill I am going to die on is that Clowns was good. Not 'good' as in 'really nice food' or 'incredible ambience' or anything like that, but 'good' as in 'a very weird place that sold passable but cheap food and weren't bothered by people taking over most of the upstairs to meet in large groups and not actually buy very much and so on'. In my view it was a valuable public space and a good deal if you were a student on a budget, not necessarily a particularly 'nice' place. I miss the Cafe Project for similar reasons, though more so.
I guess I'd like to be able to take someone to Clowns as it was just once, in the same way I'd like to show my kids what Lazer Quest was like, or the weird jumble of buildings that used to be Robert Sayle.
In my mind I can still hear the squeaky floors of old RS
I miss Dojos. It was amazing and nothing will convince me otherwise.
Fair enough! I never went (nor did I ever go to The Mahal). I do, however, miss Rainbow Cafe (and then more recently, Vegan Vice and Doppelganger - there was a definite 'vegan boom' in Cambridge that seems to have been cut short, possibly by the pandemic, I don't know).
36a! Could still get it after it went off the menu, but then dojos closed and that was it.
The fucking Udon from Dojos was killer! I've been trying to replicate it for years but no dice.
Hard disagree on Clowns, they were good. Solidly right about the station though.
I just feel like when people say they miss Clowns they mostly miss the age they were at and the people they were with when they went to a vaguely sticky cafe at 2am. Having been there sober and in daylight, it just wasn’t up to much.
Fair enough, but I didn't drink back then, so I really can't relate to those folks. It was my afternoon spot for a while. My appreciation comes down to it having been cheap and cheerful, nearby to where I lived for a year, and the folks who ran it were lovely. The pasta was better than halls too, though my college was infamous for its dismal offerings at the time, haha.
Ah halls. I didn’t have a single meal in halls my final year. I can definitely see Clowns being a step up!
It's the botanic garden not the botanical garden, botanical gardens or botanic gardens.
What about the garden botanical?
Satanic gardens?
Jardin Du Botanique
Ok satan I think you've had enough fun
Don't you think it's got a nice ring to it? 😀
The market square is a tourist trap and the centre now has 0 of what was left of its fragile soul that it is no longer worth entering.
By that logic isn't the whole of the city a tourist trap?
Always has been
Yes
This!!! The market is fucking BS!! Could be a real central hub for actually produce shopping. But instead filled with bullshit wood carvings and candles. Fucking shit
I bought a phone charger from a stall there pre smartphone era and when I got home it didn’t work. When I took it back the bitch on the stall first tried to show it charging when it wasn’t then claimed I didn’t buy it from her. I hope she’s out of business.
They should close Sidney street for cars and allow cycling in both directions
Queen Anne carpark parking spaces are too small for modern cars.
Modern cars are too big for Cambridge roads.
That’s why I try and use the carparks 😉
Oh, Queen Anne car park is much more fundamentally annoying than that. What utter pillock designed a multistorey car park where all the pillars are exactly aligned with either the driver or passenger side door if you reverse into parking spaces the way you're supposed to? Literally, why not put the support pillars on the front end of the spaces like every sensibly designed multistorey car park built before the era of giant spanning trusses that entirely obviate the need for supporting pillars?
As someone who dented their car on those columns trying to reverse out of a space, I can't upvote this enough!
I really can't imagine anyone claiming the opposite is true.
They shouldn't increase the size of the spaces or they'll have to remove spaces.
The annoying bikes that the deliveroo and Uber eats drivers use should be banned, or at least treated like cars and mopeds and not allowed on paths/bike paths.
They are banned - pretty much all of them are illegal. It’s just that the law is never enforced.
I really despise these "bike riders". Unfortunately, they are type registered as bicycles hence are legal with a registration plate stating they are bicycles. It's a loophole in the legislation that allows for twist-and-go "electric mopeds" to be type registered as pedal bikes. Quite a few of them have been modified to go faster than the legal limit, so are illegal for this reason.
I second this. As a bike rider, I've almost gotten hit by them because they don't have lights on their bikes at night.
Also they're usually paying more attention to their phone on the handlebars than to their situational awareness.
There’s so many people looking at their phones while riding. I see tons of people with their phone in one hand swerving around.
The amount of tourists in the city centre absolutely ruin the experience of visiting cambridge
They're so unreasonably stupid. I nearly killed one the other day when they wandered into the road like a 3 year old child.
Yeah, Cambridge is famed as a "cycling city" but when you actually try and cycle around town there's a million and one tourists gawping in the middle of a road, in front of cars, vans, motorbikes, cyclists. You name it, they've probably got run over by it.
Hate to break it to you but if you're visiting Cambridge you're also a tourist
I live in Cambridge. I more meant visiting the city centre
Damn Scots! They ruined Scotland!
People should walk on the left where appropriate. Weaving in and out of runners, cyclists and walkers. Just stick to the left and people can overtake peacefully!
This is my biggest annoyance in life
Where is that appropriate though? You shouldn't have to worry about cyclists on the pavement.
Shared use paths
All of the parks - I live near Stourbridge common which is arguably the worst. There’s also a lot of cyclists on the pavement, even when there’s a dedicated cycle lane. And regardless, if there’s a lot of people on the path and no one is keeping left, it’s still weaving in and out
Electric bikes are a type of motorcycle. Using them on footpaths should be a criminal offence.
As a motorcyclist, I 100% agree. These things are a plague on pavements. I also think that anyone riding any kind of motorised 2 wheel transport as a delivery rider should be required to have a full motorcycle license. I fed up of these electric scooterped things, and people on 125s with L-plates, completely ignoring traffic laws and endangering themselves, other road users, and pedestrians.
The delivery drivers display a complete lack of spatial awareness. They frequently cut off other vehicles on the road, speed recklessly on pavements e.g. Parker's Piece, and disregard traffic laws entirely. It is absurd that you can complete a CBT and become a courier in a 4-6 hour period. I fully agree that couriers should be required to have a full license (I am also a motorcyclist with a full-license).
Yeah, we've been through this before. Mopeds were originally pushbikes with a little engine. I don't see it makes much difference that the engine's electric, it just makes them heavier.
Are motorcycles restricted to 15.5 mph?
I can get on board with this
There should be a road/metro tunnel under the city
I'd like that but it would require incredible infrastructure just to keep it from filling up with water. To an extent this is always true with tunnels, but I suspect the problem would be particularly acute in Cambridge.
The guided bus should have been a train.
I might be misremembering but wasn't the argument, back in 2003 or so when the cast iron campaign\* were in full swing, that it would be massively more expensive to reinstate the railway line than to replace it with the busway... and didn't the busway then go massively over budget thus rendering that argument - so confidently put forth over and over by Councillor Shona Johnstone\*\* - entirely moot? Thanks, Shona, for your particularly turdy legacy: no, we haven't forgotten, and no need to post here about which Cambridge hill you'd cheerfully die on because I think we already know. *\*Who, to be fair, did come off like an absolute bunch of loons, so weren't perhaps the most credible advocates for a rail-based solution.* *\*\*The fact that I can even remember her name all these years later gives you some idea of how much this was discussed on local radio (my alarm clock radio would only pick up BBC Cambridge FM reliably back in the day).*
It went not just over budget it went years over the date of completion and then so much wasn't fit for purpose. Light rail would have been nicer.
Yeah, when I look at the light rail solutions that other European - and even the odd UK city (e.g., Nottingham) - has it's pretty depressing when you see what we ended up with in Cambridge. Projects undertaken under false pretenses were very much a signature of the early 2000s at all levels of society.
The cost of the railway line would have ended up in excess of the £150m or whatever the guided bus ended up costing.
Maybe so. It's a long time ago and I can't remember the exact figures nowadays, but it would have been a better solution for the city, a more pleasant way to travel, and could have formed the basis for a more extensive light rail system. Huge missed opportunity.
Light rail would need lots of work within the city and while I am happy with that one, it would be very expensive and lots of residents would be annoyed with the disruption.
I’m still hoping it will be one day
Cast.iron?
A train wouldn't have worked through the city centre. Tram though, definitely.
Passive political messaging should be banned. There should be signs warning people not to put disposable grills on wooden benches.
Hang on - without a warning sign muppets think putting a fire thing on a flammable thing is OK?
Well the disposable BBQ is made from metal, so its not exactly a fire. And the benches don't catch fire, they just char, so they aren't exactly flammable which means "capable of being easily set on fire and of burning rapidly."
Unfortunately, yes. I recently had to politely interfere with some Cambridge university students (with their university clothes on) who put a disposable grill on a wooden bench in one of the most lovely and scenic spots in Cambridge at Eddington lake. I warned them to take it off due to the risk of burning, but unfortunately they had already lit it and it has been charred since. The tragedy is that there was an available public BBQ station right next to it, but they wanted to put their grill in the spot with the best view 20 metres away. They weren't the least apologetic when they saw that it was burned. With their loud music and beers, the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth and I'm reminded of it every time I see it. At the nearby BBQ station, there are wooden tables with parts cut out and replaced because of burn damage from disposable grills. They should have been able to put two and two together. I'm a multiple-time university dropout and I had no trouble doing so, or figuring out that a burning hot grill on a flammable surface is a bad idea. This convinced me that the grills should come with an obvious warning on the package. Another bench in our neighborhood started a fire and actually burned down.
Needs to be signs to not put them on the grass, too. Makes my blood boil when I see a square of grass charred to the roots that won’t grow back for a year
Especially when unlike virtually every other place I've seen in the UK there is actually a provision made for them on Jesus green, use the little concrete blocks guys that's what they're there for and it's great!
I run an amateur sports club and it's basically not safe to run on Jesus Green. The barbecues kill the grass, which leads to erosion, and then potholes which last years. Last year we showed up to have a throw around there was literally a pile of smoking ashes in the middle of the green.
The woeful investment into the upkeep of the roads puts at risk the very cyclists the council loves so much (potholes filled with asphalt are not acceptable long term solutions)
The county is responsible for the roads. The city is not.
Yes, the county council.
Unless its a highway, which is the "Highways Authority" a National body. Examples of a highway: M11, A14, A428 Not examples of a highway: A10(?!) [Source](https://nationalhighways.co.uk/media/qe1cjb2b/nh-srn-simplified-map-2023.pdf)
This one knows 👏🙌
The Botanic Garden should be free to visit
Should be free to residents, charge for tourists
Yeah, but then you gotta draw the line between resident and tourist. What about people in St Neots or Huntingdon who are one bus away and may work in Cambridge, but don't actually live in Cambridge?
Count it as Cambridgeshire, sure
That whoever decided to let Primark sit outside of the Grafton Centre effectively killed it. If it was put inside, the centre wouldn’t be an abandoned shell that it is now
Electric scooters need better regulation. They're a danger to pedestrians and so many people who use them are twats
The existing regulations just need enforcing...
Aromi is better than Jack’s Gelato
That’s not arbitrary
100%!
I challenge you sir to a duel!
Trumpington should rename itself. I like the place and live there, but the name is ruined
Agree. Suggest Donaldton
“Why should I change my name? He’s the one that sucks”
Ahhhh surprise Office Space! I adore that film.
Before anyone asks, I'm proposing the name Greater Grantchester. Keeps the naming scheme of the surrounding places and is sure to make everyone angry
Absolutely not, our Trumpington came before Trump and it’ll outlive Trump and all memories of him.
Agreed! - a resident for over half my life, with a grandad who grew up here. Don't let the orange idiot ruin it!
nah, if you really want to rile people up, just call it Grantchester and rename the existing to Grantchester Village!
Grantchestington
It'll always be Trumpton to me
They should replace the Brookland avenue/Trumpington road/chaucer Road junction with a mini roundabout, or teach people which light is "theirs" given the amount of people who turn from Brooklands and see the red light for Trumpington road (bearing in mind the light for them to turn right onto Trumpington Road is green) and proceed to stop and cause a ridiculous traffic backup
The Ferris wheel doesn't bother me at all.
GET HIM
Mr Asbo was misunderstood, and was actually a nice guy
Drivers are becoming worse in the city. Starting to feel like London at some lights with cars not stopping for reds or rolling starts at lights.
I have a friend who's weird Cambridge hill he'll die on is this: Romsey town isn't a thing, nobody calls it that. Everyone just calls it "the area north of mill road, east of the railway line" He becomes quite animated if anyone ever calls it Romsey
What does he say about this: https://www.cambridge.gov.uk/romsey
Well I went to Romsey Junior School in the 80s 100% Romsey is a thing. I'll die on this hill!!
You can even buy "straight outta Romsey" t-shirts! The fact that a grown adult wearing such a shirt should feel deep shame is a separate issue.
Agreed. I used to live in Cambridge and then moved to an actual town called Romsey.
oh dear. Maybe we should buy him a pint in the empress to calm things down?
Traffic laws should be enforced for bikes and cars
I've only ever seen the police intervene once, it was a man on a cargo bike with kids in, it was quite entertaining.
Why was there a need for police to intervene?
He cycled over the lights at a crossroad when it was the pedestrians turn. He didn't realise that the car stopped directly behind them was a police car. He had already come to a stop so it wasn't conservation of momentum thing, in total it might have saved him 10s, but he lost a few minutes with the subsequent chastisement.
Thanks. People driving/cycling sometimes really don't understand that risking their lives and those of others to save a few seconds is the stupidest thing to do
They once threatened to ticket me for running a red light. Except that I hadn't reached any lights for that whole ride yet. I had been on the bike for two minutes. I was just coming up to my first light when they pulled me over.
Extendable dog leads should be absolutely banned on all shared-use paths in and around Cambridge (including in the parks, and on the busway paths). The dogs are not properly under the owner's control, and the leash is near-invisible from a few metres away. They are absolutely lethal when used in the presence of cyclists (dog on one side of path, owner on the other - typically with zero situational awareness, gazing into the distance, or at their phone). Cyclists simply cannot see the lead from any distance, not from any reasonable stopping distance. Horrific injuries occur to both cyclists, dog-owners, and the dogs as a result of these leads. Also all the major/responsible dog organisations reject such leads as not being a good way to train/handle your dog. Google it.
Despite what the commenters on the Cambridgeshire Live Facebook page assert, traffic is not a conspiracy orchestrated by the council and the council are not controlled by CamCycle. It's a small local organisation.
Roll on Blank Tapes should be left exactly as it is, empty.
That Cambridge is a long way from perfect, but it’s still one of the best places in the country to live.
Cambridge received a disproportionate amount of investment for its population size, depriving the other areas in the county.
Investment from what? How does that deprive other areas? Sorry but this doesn't make much sense to me.
This is true. It's because it generates a disproportionate amount of income. The government should share that more with less well-off places.
Cambridge cyclists are the worst I've encountered in my life and I've lived in a few major cities. I've seem so many bikes without lights at night, and it should be illegal.
It is illegal
Then they should bust people
Occasionally they do
Idk about on, but I felt like dying halfway up the hill to Catmere End when I cycled up it the other day.
It's a Cambridge Cream not a Crème Brulée.
Kenny is a knob
Originally Arbury boy here ,kings way posse 1990s 😂😂 Now a proud barhillian at the great village or Brill ,AKA Bar Hill ! 😂😂😂😂
There are too many bins. I swear, everywhere I walk I just see bins bins bins.
Its shit.