Community group Cambridge Carbon Neutral is campaigning for a ‘dangerous’ pedestrian and cycle bridge to be widened.
Campaigners believe Burrell’s Walk Bridge, which connects the city centre with the west, is too narrow.
Cllr Cameron Holloway, Dan Strauss and Anne Miller at Burrell’s Walk Bridge
But until now no-one knew who owned the bridge and so improvements could not begin.
However, after some investigation, the group of volunteers, who are devoted to helping reduce carbon emissions in the city, discovered the bridge as gifted to Cambridge City Council by St John’s College in 1927.
The campaigners are now asking the public to support a project to widen the bridge on a sliver of this land.
The chair of Cambridge Carbon Neutral, Anne Miller, says Burrell’s Walk is a key active travel route between the city centre and the west, particularly as it connects students’ rooms in the colleges with the university’s growing West Cambridge site.
It is just 1.7 metres wide and needs to be between 3.5 and four metres so that pedestrians can safely use one side to avoid danger from cyclists, she explains.
“This has been a problem since I was a student many decades ago, but by collaborating, we have a real opportunity to get it fixed,” she says. “What’s looking really promising is we are hearing noises from the councils, colleges and the university that they may be willing to make this happen. But it’s going to be a bigger project than we first
thought, so we need lots of support.”
Both the council and St John’s College would need to agree on future improvements to the bridge because the 1927 gift included a restriction on future developments. The group has approached them along with other interested parties including the county council, which owns the bridge, Trinity College, which owns an adjoining piece of land, and the University of Cambridge.
The plan has already won support from city councillor Cameron Holloway (Lab, Newnham). He plans to make an application for £25,000 from Cambridgeshire County Council’s Local Highway Improvement fund to pay for a wider and safer bridge over Bin Brook.
Cllr Holloway says a recent survey showed that around 6,000 people used the bridge each day.
He said: “We want to encourage people to cycle and walk, but in order to do that we have to make it safe.
“It gets extremely congested – I’ve been walking and cycling along Burrells Walk for years and pretty much every time you go there you see people coming close to a collision. That’s why we want to see it widened.”
The group is calling for members of the public to share their views before the bid deadline on January 10, via a consultation on its website at shorturl.at/ELnCl.
The bid will be backed by statements of support that Carbon Neutral Cambridge has gathered with the help of local resident Dan Strauss.