Political View: It's a 'No' to road charging for Peterborough and Cambridgeshire

​Specifically in relation to transport as there has been some misinformation being spread on Lorna’s position on the subject.

In September 2023 Lorna was one of six signatories to a letter which put an end to plans for road charging in Cambridge. It was absolutely the right thing to do. To be clear Lorna does not support ULEZ or congestion charging in Cambridgeshire and if elected would not seek to implement such schemes.

Lorna’s plan for the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough area is as follows:

Across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, traffic and transport is most residents’ top priority, and for many different reasons.

Despite Peterborough’s place on the rail network, and more buses than many places, traffic in the city is growing faster than the average for our region.

Cambridge and its travel to work area are facing almost unparalleled levels of growth, placing extraordinary demands not only on its travel networks, but on water availability and infrastructure of every kind.

Carbon emissions in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough are 25 per cent higher than the national average—not least due to the heavy traffic from the M11, A14 and A1 through South Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire.

While Cambridgeshire has seen improvements in public transport such as the guided busway from Huntingdonshire into Cambridge, but this only service a part of our area.

Road charging is a punitive answer, especially where there is an absence of alternatives. We need alternatives that are available, attractive and affordable.

For Cambridge and its surrounding area, outgoing Mayor Nik Johnson was right to bin his predecessor James Palmer’s overblown and unaffordable CAM Metro, but wrong to leave us with no alternative.

The next Mayor must bring all the partners together to agree an ambitious but achievable vision for mass transit which will enable people to move into, out of, and around Cambridge in the significant numbers projected for future decades.

Many residents of our area can’t drive, for a variety of reasons, including ill-health, age, or the inability to afford a car or its insurance or upkeep. We can’t continue to exclude them from employment, training, leisure, or the many other reasons why people need to travel.

We need to fill the gaps in walking and cycling routes, and remove the barriers to travelling on foot or bicycle. Peterborough is a fine example with its green wheel, but even that has gaps that simply need joining up.

We need to free up road space by getting freight off the highway and onto rail. That means lobbying Government to prioritise rail capacity enhancement to free up rail movements across our area which are holding up greater use of trains, for freight and passengers.

The current Mayor’s recent decision to proceed with bus franchising will help—bus services outside London have withered since they were deregulated under Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1986. But success or failure will depend on how franchising is implemented, and on having the resources to invest in commissioning the right services. It’s important to retain a variety of bus service providers, and to avoid the risk of a single operator dominating the market and driving out smaller firms which run good local services.

It's a big agenda, and we need someone like Lorna with the experience of being part of the Combined Authority for several years to hit the ground running and spend the full term getting this delivered.

The message is clear we need residents to back Lorna Dupré for Mayor this May.