Following the closure of Mill Road Bridge for railway works and the huge disruption from gas main renewal, we are now back to the pre-closure status quo ante. But what does the Mill Road community want for the future?
You can remind yourself of some of the issues on these (historic) blogposts: Closure of Mill Road Bridge for Railway Works Summer 2019 and Mill Road Gas Main Works.
This page (and the linked blogposts) are the place for you, Mill Road residents and traders, to debate the issues. Add your comments at the foot of this page, or under any of the linked blogposts.
For longer, more considered comments, email us you text and send us any photos which you would like us to add, to accompany your piece. (Please don’t create a document with the photos embedded in them; we have to separate them out for web publication.)
That was the summer that was
Here is one resident’s view:
Like other residents and most traders, I was irritated by Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) organising a meeting about Mill Road on the other side of town (Mill Lane). It made me doubt their map-reading abilities which led me to question whether their brief was to upgrade facilities in Cambridge, rather than Camberley, Camden or Camberwell.
Charlotte de Blois [Read more]
I survived Mill Road Summer
A personal chronicle
The long slog began nearly a year ago when many of us received an email on October 27 alerting us to a public meeting to be held only days later on November 1 announcing the Mill Road Bridge closure. Small notices on lamp-posts were the only other warning given. The hosts were Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), Network Rail and its contractors; the venue was the DoubleTree Hilton, on Mill Street by the river.
Pamela Wesson, proprietor of Mill Road’s Fantasia, purveyor of ‘unusual and unnecessary items’ [Read more]
Mill Road Vision: Public Meeting – What Was Discussed?
The evening meeting, on Tuesday 8th October, at St Barnabas Church, was hosted by the Mill Road Summer Committee and aimed to raise awareness of the City Council’s ‘Making Spaces for People’ consultation and encourage discussion about a vision for the future on Mill Road.
Click through to the Over Mill Road Bridge blogpost for full details.
Mill Road TV‘s video of the meeting is here.
Lord Drainlid‘s video of highlights of the meeting is here.
Time for a Mill Road Plan?
Mill Road is at the centre of a Conservation area. No other arterial road in the city has this designation. The road’s history is central to the story of Cambridge. It is a ‘High Street’ in its own right. It serves the population of a small town in the surrounding catchment area, with the highest pedestrian footfall of any main road outside the city centre, but the City Council has no ‘Plan’ for Mill Road.
Allan Brigham [Read more]
A Traffic-Free Mill Road?
Mill Road should be a thriving place, with tens of thousands of residents around it, and a fantastic range of shops and community facilities. Yet traders are often struggling. Why is this?
What’s the one thing that almost everyone agrees is bad about Mill Road? The traffic. So isn’t it time something was actually done about it?
Martin Lucas-Smith, Petersfield Resident, and Camcycle [Read more]
Mill Road – the high street of a small town within Cambridge city?
Adjudged by The Times in March 2013 as 26th out of ‘The 30 coolest places to live in Britain’, over twenty-five thousand people live in the three Cambridge city wards – Coleridge, Petersfield and Romsey – which surround Mill Road.
[Read more]
Romsey Lakes
At the most easterly end of Mill Road, through Brookfields, across Perne Road are three large lakes. They are not currently open to the general public.
That may change before too long.
[Read more]
Pavement Parking along Mill Road
For many years local residents have complained about cars, taxis, vans and lorries driving onto Mill Road’s pavements, creating a hazard for all pedestrians, but especially for wheelchair-users, people with vision disabilities and for parents with young children. Even when no vehicle is on the the pavement, paving-slabs had been compressed and cracked by irresponsible drivers, crating trip hazards.
[Read more]
Community, or car park?
Should parking on our streets be for residents and visitors, or an unregulated car-park for commuters?
[Read more]
Add your own comments about your vision for the future of Mill Road, in the comments section, below.
Mill Road with reduced traffic? Sounds good to me.
I run a consultancy business just off Mill Road and live here too. I’d welcome anything that dramatically reduced car traffic and pollution. Nearly all of our 40 staff cycle or take public transport.
Mill Road also feels unsafe with this amount of traffic – not just to cyclists because of cars/buses (or because of cyclists ignoring crossings and lights) . One of my colleagues was once hit by a bus wing mirror when he was WALKING on the pavement.
I’d also love to sit outside of the cafes, but the particulate pollution is grim and the noise makes it unpleasant.
Any change does need to be carefully thought through, however, and not just move the congestion and pollution problem on. It also needs to give access to deliveries, etc. It’d also be good to make the various connecting roads between Mill Road and Hills Road one way or pedestrianised (perhaps with resident only access).
Finally, I don’t think the temporary closure was indicative of what it could be like (for traders) with reduced traffic more permanently because the road works and gas works going on at the same time made it generally unpleasant – certainly I avoided it a bit until the works were done.