Your District Councillor

COUNTY COUNCIL LETTER

August & September 1999

Writing these notes during a particularly wet weekend 1 am thankful that our holiday starts in late September. 1 hope you have a good break from routine with holidays, leftover jobs or catching up in one way or another to look back on came September.

Cambridge centre road system will change by the time you read this. After 25th August only bus, taxi or cycle traffic will be able to reach Drummer St., or Parkside via Emmanuel Rd. Rising bollards are to be installed there to stop other traffic and the only approach for us to the bus station will be to drive past the swimming pool and turn right at the Catholic Church and right again opposite Robert Sayle. At the same time it will not be possible to turn left from Downing St. All the associated works should be complete by the end of October.

Park and Ride changes Again at the end of August after the new Park and Ride opens at Babraham Rd., it will be possible to travel by bus from Newmarket Rd. P&R to Madingley Rd direct or to Cowley Rd or Babraham Rd by changing bus in Emmanuel St or the Grafton Centre. The coming of P&R has helped with Cambridge traffic as 14,000 people are regularly using these services.

On the 2nd August a new campaign against drink driving started. It is a grim fact that during the last 3 years there were 271 drink-driving accidents in Cambs compared with 196 in the previous three years. Maybe the extension of our bus services to Cambridge in the evenings will encourage people to use the bus and not the car when visiting pubs, clubs or restaurants.

At the Addenbrookes Hospital board meeting in July it was revealed that waiting lists in the catchment area still remain at around 7300 (66 waiting for more than 15 months) It is interesting that Delayed Discharge patients (new name for bed blockers) now amount to over 100 at Addenbrookes. Finding alternative solutions for those people would obviously help the waiting list.

The cost of waste disposal has rocketed in recent years. You and 1 pay for this through our taxes. The more rubbish that is recycled the less we pay. As the cost is now £25/ton to dispose of household waste there is a personal gain for each of us to recycle glass, paper and aluminium drink cans.