Last Tuesday the County Council cabinet, with glorious irony, approved a plan to spent £590,000 on extending the real-time bus information system around Cambridge … including Milton where our bus service is being cut. This will be the same information you can already see
here on village web site.

There will apparently be signs at bus stops as well as a large screen display at Tesco(!).

Members of Cambridgeshire County Council were told that the money was from developers and is specifically for transport which cannot be spent on bus subsidies because it is meant to provide infrastructure. Cllr Roy Pegram, cabinet member for growth, infrastructure and strategic planning, said:

Where this is installed it actually increases patronage of the public on bus routes.

It makes people more willing to use bus routes. If you are standing in the rain you want to know the bus is likely to arrive.

This money can’t be spent on community transport. It must be spent on Cambridge and south Cambridgeshire or it will be lost.

On balance it probably is good news: in the past if a Citi 2 didn’t turn up another one or a 9/X9 would along soon enough, but with a half hour periodicity you really want to know if you’ve got a long wait because your bus has been cancelled.