Sorry to drone on about Arbury Road...

I've just been looking at the Greater Cambridge website (thats what the re-branded City Deal call themselves now).

And its ever more clear that officers have basically gone rogue.

Q: When will hedging work take place?

In order to avoid bird nesting season, hedge trimming and any removal will be undertaken in the Autumn from September onwards.

Well thats nonsense. They cut the hedge down and hastily re-planted in the last few days of March - this did cause massive disruption. Disruption and damage we're still fighting to reduce.

Whats interesting is that the original consultation documents aren't there on the site. Here's a link to them that doesn't work any more...

Forced to ask - why?

What are you hiding guys?

EDIT: I still can't find a link to the original consultation document which, I believe discussed reducing or removing parts of the hedgerows (not the removal of the whole thing). I have been directed here though - it seems Greater Cambridge isn't quite that keen to keep all of their old material in one place.

Arbury Road Hedge: Tiny, beginning of a glimmer

I set out to co-operate with the City Deal to get the best outcome for better cycle provision and environmental improvement on Arbury Road - the old hedge was a fine old thing but due to poor management there was room for improvement.

Things didn't go to plan. Major balls up, if I'm honest.

I shot this film on the way home yesterday to show how bad its getting:

If you're reading this and you've ever gardened where bindweed is a major pest you'll know that you can lose plants to it - it can cover over a young shrub, blocking light out from the leaves and effectively starve it of sunlight. The last thing you want to do is put a trellis up in front of newly planted shrubs, letting bindweed grow up it and shading everything out. Which is precisely what they've done with the fence.

The only undergrowth plants really thriving are the ones with really tough root stocks, we've lost the vast bulk of species we had - and it was quite needles. By planting at the wrong time of year with the wrong species and mulching heavily, restoring the undergrowth (where a lot of the real biodiversity lies) is an uphill task. 

But they're finally (after I've pestered City Deal chief exec, and the Chief Exec of the County Council, repeatedly) agreed to cut some holes in the fence to let hedgehogs through. Its a start. Its late, and its tiny, but its a start.

What comes now is a big push towards getting them to obtain and plant some native wild plants (there are various suppliers who do this well) - it'll need some weeding come Autumn, and then lets get some restoration planting in. If we were talking about a native hedge re-planted in the countryside we could just wait and it would all be fine - but this hedge has tarmac on both sides of it, gritted in winter to the earth will be liberally salted. If its going to recover it'll need our help.

I want City Deal to be a success. But for that we need to see them working with residents and understanding the environmental context of what they're doing. Otherwise they'll see nothing but opposition and endless protest against what they're doing. I want to see good quality cycle schemes (unlike the farce in Green End Road), but we won't get that if residents end up fighting City Deal every step of the way. Going forward there are still very serious concerns for planting schemes on Histon Road, Miltn Road and elsewhere - come on guys, do you not want to turn this into a win? Do you now want to show you can work WITH us? 

Arbury Road - correspondence with County Chief Exec

I phoned the Chief Execs office, explaned the situation re. Arbury Road Hedge, and Chief Execs PA asked me to email. I agreed if Chief Exec would then be willing to maybe talk to me about it, and sent this last week:

Dear Ms. Beasley,
I talked to your PA, in the hope I might meet with you to discuss the colossal cock-up that suffices as the hedging scheme on Arbury Road. Its a complex set of issues best discussed in person, but I've kept a log of events mostly summarised here:

http://www.cambridgecyclist.co.uk/2017/04/arbury-road-cycle-lane-and-hedge.html

As you can see, there are numerous links therein to each part of the process.
Since then, they've done two further (stupid) things:  

http://www.cambridgecyclist.co.uk/2017/05/arbury-road-cycle-lane-scheme-peak.html

I'm facing a total refusal from the City Deal when trying to get them to make good on any aspect of this.

I'd like to meet with you and discuss what can be done - I know that Kings Hedges hasn't got the pester power of, say, Milton Road, but I don't think that means that City Deal should be able to take us for mugs. Simple things - resolving to re-plant the under-story with appropriate native species, sourcing a simple wire fence (or even just cutting holes every 3 or 4m to allow hedgehogs through) would make a big difference.

Thanks

The response was disappointing - I was told that someone who is a communications manager at City Deal would be in touch. Thats good isn't it? Rather than escalate my complaint the desire was to nudge me sideways to someone who, when I talked to her this morning, hadn't a clue what it could possibly have to do with her.

I sent further emails about this on Friday (anticipating said Comms officer would think this daft):

Sorry that's not acceptable and I will not be expecting that contact - I don't want to de-escalate this, I want to take it upwards.

Multiple County employees have done everything they can to dodge this already and the season is stretching on - unless amelioration is urgently planned then we'll have no hope of restoring any of the damage done. I don't want to move this laterally, I want to escalate this to the Chief Executive directly.

Please can I have that conversation with the chief executive, as soon a possible?

And...

I would also like to repeat an FoI request (so far completely ignored by City Deal) to you.

I would like you to release all documents related to any and all ecological surveys of the he hedge on Arbury Road prior to the removal thereof in March, and those pertaining to selection of species to replant. I believe that scant consideration was given to the ecology of the site and would like to inspect said documents.

I have requested this from City Deal already, but they have not responded to my FoI request.
Yours

And then this one today...

Ms. (x) was perfectly nice when I called her, but was as baffled as I was as to why a communications manager ought to be talking about a hedge.

Please arrange a time for for us to discuss this, Me. Beasley. I've discussed it with multiple County Council officers including (x), (y) and (z). None of them are willing to do a single thing to ameliorate the ecological damage caused by the scheme which has incorporated the wrong plants, at the wrong time of year, mulched to exclude the possibility of the vast bulk of native species in undergrowth re-growing and protected by a hedgehog-barrier that further fragments the habitat of this increasingly threatened species. 

I don't believe any environmental assessment was conducted and I don't think that the ecology of the site or wider area was considered at all - the plants were bought while consultation on what to plant was on-going, any and all community engagement was a sham to make us think we were being listened to.

Officers have failed here, in every important environmental aspect. There is no purpose referring me back to the same people who have demonstrated so clearly they have no interest.
The only course here is escalation.

Can we meet and talk or discuss this on the phone. Ms. Beasley. I will not accept that sending someone out for a couple of hours with bolt-cutters to cut holes for hedgehogs, and then re-planting plugs of native plant species in Autumn, are beyond the capability or budget of City Deal or the County Council.
Yours,

I've contacted two different wildlife charities and I'm waiting their responses.

It would be fair to say that in my opinion County officers have failed here, misreably and entirely. Huge opportunity for a very positive environmental outcome has been squandered. What a shame. What a crying shame.

Arbury Road, Continued...

So this all happened.

 And then this.

Quick version - consultation on reducing some of an old hedge for building a cycle lane (much needed). Cycle lane allegedly coming soon but actual plans showing whether it'll be crap or not still not produced. Instead of removing SOME of the old, very diverse, wildlife friendly hedge it was removed in its entirety at the tail end of the planting season, with the many of the wrong shrubs (unsuited to local conditions, poisonous next to primary school, and not part of local hedging culture) planted - very mature specimens at massive cost, at the wrong time of year necessitating very frequent watering. And then they bought the wrong fencing (this was confirmed to our County Councillor) and insisted on using it anyway, and mulched the hedge with wood-chips to make sure the very broad range of native species in the seed-stock could never grow back - its already being choked with spreading species like bind weed. And the fence they put in is has holes too small for hedgehogs to get through. The scheme is brutally insensitive to every ecological concern.

Still with me? 

Good.

I complained again, of course, that the barrier to hedgehogs getting through is unacceptable, and that I found one little fellow stuck in there - he'd have got out eventually I should think but there's no need for this. 

And got a response...

I refer to your email to (County Officer A) and (County Officer B) on the 4th July 2017 concerning the post and wire fence erected alongside the new mature hedging on Arbury Road and the comments you make relating to hedgehogs being trapped within the meshing.

I spoke to an ecologist that we have used on a number of schemes and their opinion was similar to mine ie this issue isn’t something which requires attention. In fact their main thought was that the fence would be of benefit in stopping hedgehogs from wandering out into Arbury Road and endangering themselves in that way.

Consequently it is my intention to take no further action on the fence, especially considering its temporary nature and I also have to be very mindful of budget constraints as the scheme progresses.

I would urge you to contact me as the Project Manager for the scheme if you have any other issues which I would be happy to resolve for you.

So they don't get it. The complaint is about habitat fragmentation - 'hogs currently cross the road from the gardens opposite (shady and leafy mostly) where they tend to rest up, and they forage on and around the green spaces in the housing estate. If you block that route they'll walk along the road for longer - they'll go up and down looking for a route, rather than straight across. This will put them at GREATER risk.

I should also point out that I've talked to this chap before and made absolutely clear that I didn't want to complain -to- him, I want to complain -about- how he and his team are handling it. This guy didn't believe he had any duty to consult on what to plant or how - he doesn't believe there is any responsibility to get landscaping or ecology of the site right. To him the hedge is green stuff you go past, and he has no other concerns. 

And the fence is temporary? Not really - its there until the hedge is bushy enough so people don't trample through it. Its wispy and weedy now, and it'll stay wispy and weedy for years because they've planted the wrong species. Species that have no history in hedging culture in this part of England because they don't thrive here. Yes, the alder-buckthorn is pretty much going to survive for a few years because its being intensively watered, but it'll slowly die off when that stops - until hawthorn and other species planted sucker up into that space (which as the hedge won't be 'laid' as such, it'll only be trimmed) will be how long? 5 years? 10? The spindle trees will do sort of ok, but they're not a 'bushy hedging plant in our conditions. Nor is the dogwood - and its a poor barrier to people walking through.

The tight-holed fence (rather than simple wires) is also a great place for bindweed, black bryony etc. to grow up and along - they're already starting to swamp parts of the hedge, and are shading out any other plants that dare put their noses up through the mulch (and endangering the planted shrubs - when it really gets going it can shade out and kill trees in their first year or two). The fence is actively hostile to restoration of the habitat destroyed.

I tried to escalate this again, right up to the Chief Exec of the County Council, but her PA is acting as a firewall and is insisting I speak to a 'Strategic Communications Manager'. Because presumably some comms person will be more adept at fobbing me off. What the hell has this got to do with 'communication' and how is that in practical terms any kind of escalation? Why would I want to talk to a 'communications manager' about a hedge?

My advice? Don't trust City Deal (or as they've rebranded themselves Greater Cambridge Partnership). They're not accountable, they're not following through with their own consultations, and they're brutally hostile to any and all concerns re. local ecology. Their delivery on cycle schemes so far is dreadful. And they've actually modeled cycling out of Milton Road. It is a shady, secretive, malicious, un-democratic, poorly accountable, waste of money. Will the cycle lane we get eventually be worth it? Probably not - it'll only go down half of the road, and where we most need it (a supposedly 20mph road but effectively a gauntlet of speeding cars pushing cyclists into tight packed parked cars on either end) its going to evaporate to nothing. 

It would be better had this bad joke of a scheme never started.

Victim Blaming Cambridge Police Launch 'Share the Road' attack

So in many ways Cambridge is the capital of British cycling - we've a higher cycling modal share than other cities, we've a history and culture of cycling.

But lets be clear - our police service, local authorities, and indeed our new Greater Cambridge Partnership (a re-branding of Greater Cambridge City Deal - that name being damaged goods after numerous terrible schemes already on the ground) remain entirely hostile to cycling and primarily focused on facilitating motoring.

Take, for example, Green End Road. They've put paint on the road and thats it basically - you can legally block the narrow bike lane by parking your car and be certain that as you skim cyclists elbows whizzing past the absurdly narrow bike lane well above the speed limit, the Cops won't give a toss, and as a result 20mph limits have had no impact in Cambridge.

If you really want a single, simple snap-shot of our victim blaming culture look at this:

Last year 456 cyclists were injured in collisions across Cambs accounting for 15% of all road related deaths and injuries #sharetheroad pic.twitter.com/2HgiwnNKx0

— Cambs police (@CambsCops) July 3, 2017

Lets take this apart. 

Cyclists are harmed disproportionately on the roads of this county. There are numerous ways to respond to this, of course - most rationally we could look at what does harm to cyclists and police it. Since West Midlands Police kicked off Operation Close Pass and started proactively policing for cyclist safety their campaign has been taken on by numerous other forces - with hugely positive press for doing so. But here in Cambridge we can't even get the cops to pursue motorists with crystal clear video evidence of wrongdoing. 

So, sadly, our police have not responded to this problem by saying they'll police in the interest of reducing road danger for cyclists - they've told us to #sharetheroad. The mutual respect fallacy. This bizarre idea that we somehow don't respect motorists so its all our own fault. The idea we're not sharing, we're not playing nice. Its complete bollocks, of course.

And best of all, they're reinforcing this vacuous message with an (un-commented) photograph of a van, crossing the solid white line en route to the blind crest of a the bridge on Mill Road, thus overtaking a lady carrying a child on the back of her bike (she's blameless here). And, comically, to really make sure we know our place, they've chosen a shot of a vehicle belonging to Cambridge City Council to show this point. Yep, a local authority van driver taking a liberty with cyclist safety.

Share The Road, they say. With drivers overtaking over solid white lines on the blind crest of a bridge in vehicles belonging to your local authority, and we as your Police force are so clueless about road safety we'll tweet this photographic evidence of bad driving not only without comment but we'll use it in a victim-blaming response to the shocking rate of cyclist injuries which we'll do absolutely nothing about.

We tend to get over-excited about the occasional bit of decent but ultimately disconnected cycle route in Cambridge. We could foolishly believe that we're an exception. But we're not - if anything, the reliance that the City Council has on car-parking fees and the Blue-Rinse Fenlanders who dominate the County Council mean that we're a more car-sick city than most. But if you really want evidence of how we're treated, look at that tweet from the Police force. They don't exactly hate us, they simply think everything is our own fault. They are motorists - we're policed by, and for, drivers. 

Go on, Cambridgeshire Constabulary. Prove me wrong. Prove us all wrong. Shake off #badlyparkedbike, and lets see you take on #OperationClosePass. 

Will they do that? Will they feck.

Arbury Road Cycle Lane - Hedge (again)

Chased this at the North Area Committee. Incensed that they tried to cut the public-questions section short and I had to heckle to get this heard. Turns out that our local democracy really is struggling, if you're not a geriatric belly-aching about non-resident parking I don't think they want to hear. Anway, raised it there, and that will probably achieve nothing.

This is a copy of an email I've just sent the elected Mayor:

Dear James,

I contacted you via. Twitter, as you're our new mayor, to discuss a problem I've had with City Deal.

You may be aware that we're getting some long-overdue upgrades on Arbury Road in North Cambridge. With any luck we'll eventually get a cycle route all the way down Arbury Road so people living in, say, Histon or Orchard Park will be able to ride to work at places like the Beehive Centre. We sorely need this, and I'm supportive of each part as long as we're working towards a cohesive whole (i.e. a route on the whole length of the road). I rather fear we'll end up with a good facility down half the length of the road, one that'll look good but hardly be used because it doesn't connect to anywhere. But thats another story.

Stage 1 has already been completed, and we're in the middle of stage 2. When the consultation stage of that happened, the proposal was that the hedge by Arbury Road would be 'reduced'. When the project kicked off in March, we were given just a couple of days notice that this would not be the case - the hedge would be removed in its entirety.

Now before going further I should stress that while this hedge wasn't one of the hedges that gave Kings Hedges its name it was still an old structure. Arbury Road is the oldest street name in Cambridge, and there were species present in the hedge indicative that it pre-dated the housing estate by some time - the presence of greengages in the hedge (which were grown in this area commercially before the 1960's) was one indicator, but the overall diversity of undergrowth plants was a clear measure that this hedge was historic. When I contacted City Deal about this, I calmly discussed with them what could be done to instead retain some biodiversity and restore the damage when the hedge was grubbed up and re-planted a little to the left (which was their plan). They initially seemed enthusiastic about this, to discuss what should be re-planted to retain local hedging culture, wildlife, and overall biodiversity, but it soon became apparent that they'd already bought more plants and that the discussion they were having was purely to try to appease me - they didn't meaningfully consult on the plants or replanting. My goal was to get a better planting scheme. Their goal was to make me believe I was being listened to while not changing a single part of any plan they had.

They claimed that the rush to get the job done at the end of March was to get the planting done before the end of the season. In truth, Spring had already come to Cambridge and this job was done too late. They claimed they were missing out sections of hedge where there were birds nesting already - by my estimation they came to within about 2m of nesting blackbirds with chainsaws and chippers. Needless to say those birds abandoned the nest. I think the rush came because they were in a hurry to spend money before the end of the financial year - the decision they took to cut and replace a hedge at the end of March makes no arboricultural or ecological sense.

I should stress that a mature hedgerow isn't just the trees, and that hedging isn't the same across the country (or even just this county). They're practical structures, and hedging custom across the UK has evolved differently with very good reason - what thrives is not the same in Cumbria and Kent! What we've got-replanted is a generic British mix, with numerous species that are entirely inappropriate for Cambridge. Dogwood, for example, can grow here but is a poor barrier species in our conditions. Spindle is in the mix, and it plays no part in local hedging culture. Alder buckthorn is in it too - its a tree that likes its toes wet, and when they stop watering the new plants it'll soon be out-competed. I certainly wouldn't plant any of these bright-berried toxic species right by a school in large numbers (and yes, they have).

But trees are only part of the full diversity of a hedge - and the City Deal have done their best to destroy any hope of the rest of the biodiversity of the hedge recovering. They've put down a mulch of wood-chips so the only undergrowth plants recovering are those with ineradicable root stocks. So rather than having a very varied habitat with multiple species, we're primarily seeing the site choked by bindweed, cow parsley and few others.

To make absolutely sure that the site is as wildlife hostile as possible they installed a wire fence with gaps at the bottom smaller than an adullt hedgehog. Its hard to envisage anything more stupid than that.

Now Kings Hedges hasn't got the busybody population that Milton Road has - the latter has a large, retired population who've owned their own homes for a long time and who know how to mobilise and badger for what they want. Kings Hedges doesn't - and City Deal took full advantage of that in cutting corners in their consultation. The idea that the hedge (an old boundary) was to be removed entirely wasn't in the consultation. City Deal staff insisted that they have consulted with hedge experts at the City Council but when I asked the City Council officer responsible for trees about their hedging expertise he told me that on the subject of native hedging, they don't have such expertise.

The amount of damage done to the local environment by this has been colossal -  but by hand-weeding and re-planting appropriate native plants (ideally sourced locally to retain local biodiversity) through the very damaging wood-chip mulch (which will itself ensure that any seeds surviving in the soil can't re-emerge as new plants, thats precisely what the mulch is for) we could still, perhaps, rescue something from a scheme which has been executed so very, very badly. The wire mesh blocking hedgehogs from the hedge urgently needs replacing with a simple wire fence that doesn't block wildlife. And owing to the wrong choice of plants being put in we need a much longer term commitment to replacing with more appropriate plants (specifically a mix with far more hawthorn, some elder and dog-rose) over the coming years. The degree to which the wrong plants have been tended this year means, I fear, we're looking at a much slowed death spiral.

I would rather hope you might lean on City Deal over this. If we're going to have ever more such projects going forward then messing up perfectly simple projects like this in a mad dash to get the wrong plants put in, at the wrong time, in the wrong way, is something we need to avoid of City Deal is to regain any trust locally. I'm aware they're trying to re-brand because they've got bad name already - perhaps fixing this could be something of an olive branch?

Thanks

Milton Road Plans - A World Where Cyclists Don't Exist.

There are times when its really hard to know how to start a blog post. 

This is not one of them. The stupid is strong here, I don't have to qualify any statements with anything 

Greater Cambridge City Deal, have pissed away about half a million quid on consultations, consultants, visulisations and modelling for upgrading Milton Road. The models, incidentally, don't include cyclists except as an inconvenience that might slow cars down. The result of this comical ineptitude (in a city where half of the people here cycle) is that plans for what to do for cycling on Milton Road vary from inconvenient to actively dangerous. Oh, and part of the brief for councillors and attendees at meetings with the consultants who came out with this crap is that no one disses the consultants. Yeah, thats right, despite the fact they've taken heaps of cash for producing something crap, you're not allowed to go to meetings and tell them that this is shit.

I'm not even kidding. I'm not even exaggerating,

Here's the PDF of their presentation thing, only click on it if you want to download pages of bumf as well as useful images.

But just look at this crap.

Seriously? Trees aren't lollipops with narrow stick like trunks and neat canopies, growing happily through tarmac with no earth around them and no roots growing outwards, ever. The cycle-lane seems to be an undulator, presumably going up, and down, up, and down with each driveway - and thats going on on the other side of the road there? Looks narrower than I am.

Bugger it, I was going to go through several of the junctions and say why they're on the whole not good enough for cycling (so not good enough to encourage anyone out of their cars and on to bikes) but I can't be arsed. Short version - if you don't consider cyclists valid road users, which would be the only reason not to be abundantly apologetic for presenting a shit model that excludes us, then you won't get junction design right for cycling. There aren't real Dutch roundabouts among the more favoured plans and we're seeing a variety of cycle lanes from well protected segregated through to shared use, rather than a single, useful, straight forward, segregated route in each direction. Lessons from Hills Road haven't been learned, what we're looking at is, as a whole, crap. And we're paying through the nose for this crap to be drawn, re-drawn, and re-drawn again.

City Deal has proved itself unable to deliver landscaping as part of a road regeneration scheme. They see landscaping as something to do a bodge job at the end, they don't care for local ecology, aesthetics or planting culture and they take an extremely broad view of what consultation questions can be stretched to mean. If we're going to get Milton Road not only made safer for cycling but more efficient for all road users and landscaped such that it isn't visibly an urban motorway, is we want an interesting and diverse tree-scape rather than just whatever crap thats big enough that they can buy at the last minute we need to start looking to see what can be grown now. You want mature trees replanted? How many species of such do you think can be bought, in number, at the last minute? Oh, you haven't looked at that yet? Its almost too late already.

So I invite Milton Road Residents Association, Milton Road Alliance and whoever else gives a crap - do you want to get a good resolution that can be sold to all parties? Lets start talking about what tree species we want. Lets start now. I've got ideas on what trees could be used, and means to turn this into not only a great route for riding but a truly world class tree-scape.