you couldn't make it up!

I know this looks like some sterile Photoshop fantasy, but this madness is actually happening in Cambridgeshire. This is the guided busway that some loonies have been building - on a railway route would you believe - between Cambridge and St Ives.

In the words of one of our members - I have been meaning to go over and photo some of this meaningless busway before it opens, just as a warning to other railway re-opening schemes just what can be imposed by government if you're not careful.

I doubt very much that this would ever happen through the Mendip Hills, but it just goes to show that rather than accept the fact that they were wrong to close these lines in the first place, they will re-open them as busways instead, as it can mean less loss of face.

They won't last into the future, as its really a poor mans' railway, albeit at twice the cost!

I have to pinch myself looking at these pictures. What the hell are they thinking of??

This line has a vigorous campaigning group, seeking to have the (previously intact) route restored, electrified and ready to carry hundreds of thousands of former car users into Cambridge and on to the network. Instead they get this total joke, an oil-using monstrosity that peters out on the outskirts of Cambridge to just push more (inevitably almost empty) dirty buses to fight their way through the congestion to the sanity of Cambridge railway station - at more than twice the price of a restored railway (three times the cost of a modern tramway or light railway)!

So what poor St Ives gets is a time-limited joke, more oil guzzling buses that aren't even flexible. No solution to future freight transport. A one-off system with no ability to expand, a soon to be overgrown 'showpiece' that is unlikely to tempt anyone out of their cars once the novelty's worn off. It's already looking tatty, even before it's opened. It'll be no use in the snow. All it will do is encourage the citizens of St Ives to call for the restoration of their railway ASAP. What a total joke.

Mick Knox cleverly likens it to the Haytor Granite Tramway (below).



That also was a one off, and you can still see its remains high up on Dartmoor. This will be the perfect monument to this hopelessly failed government - an overgrown anachronism. A badly thought out 'solution' to the end of cheap oil, that appeals to no-one, doesn't do the job and was a total waste of money. All it tells us is that they have no intention of allowing us to own private transport in the future.

This caused a major upset in Cambridgeshire. 3800 people voted for the railway, 4 for the busway. 4!! And I doubt even they will use it ....