General benefits from reduced traffic
Traffic reduction, as a result of both the creation of massive improvements to transport, and a Congestion Charge itself, would have a whole range of benefits.
The County Council’s documentation (table 0.2, page xiii) shows that the key benefits in terms of general traffic reduction would be:
- Reduction in vehicle mileage in Cambridge by 10% from current levels (this is in fact a much larger reduction bearing in mind there would be 47,500 new houses by 2016)
- Congestion within the city boundary is reduced by 47%
- Overall travel time spent on the highway network in Cambridge decreased by 30%.
- The amount of CO2 emissions is reduced by 25%.
Traffic reduction would have the benefits above, plus the side-benefit of making more space on the roads for cycling and public transport.
Page xvi of the documentation also specifies the following benefits, which again seem to be achievable in our view:
- A net improvement of approximately 3,000 houses benefiting from a reduction in traffic noise
- Local air quality improvements resulting from less car traffic and cleaner buses
- Reductions in Greenhouse gas emissions
- A projected reduction of 26 fatal and 239 serious injury accidents across the 60 year appraisal period.
- More than 80,000 of the population will have improved conditions for crossing roads and avoiding traffic, either as pedestrians, cyclists or equestrians.
[However, we question whether the 60-year period outlined in one bullet point is a sensible time-frame. The other benefits are clearly much more immediate.]