A city where you don't need a car.

Rail first

The transport backbone is heavy rail. Our Transport Expert Working Group recommends two major interventions: Double tracking the Cambridge to Newmarket line, removing a single track bottleneck, enabling turn up and go frequencies to Cambridge, and taking Felixstowe freight lorries off the A14.

The second is a new rail link south from the city through Haverhill towards Stansted, creating an eastern arc that connects Forest City to Cambridge, the airport and London without funnelling everything through Cambridge station.

Haverhill is one of the largest towns in England without a railway station. It lost its line in 1967. Under this plan it gets a station again, around six minutes from the centre of Forest City, on a line running to Cambridge in one direction and Stansted and London in the other.

Inside the city

Three tram or metro lines form the spine of the city, connecting neighbourhoods, the centre and Cambridge's southern research campuses. Every neighbourhood is walkable, with a greenway network of walking and cycling routes threaded through the forest. Streets follow a clear hierarchy: pedestrians first, then bikes, then public transport, then cars.

Of course you can own a vehicle in Forest City. You just won't need one to live a full life. That's the difference between this and every car dependent estate built in the last 50 years. Four park and ride sites at the edge of the city intercept through traffic so the streets inside stay calm.

Better for nature too

Transport corridors are designed as wildlife corridors, with land bridges reconnecting habitats over major roads and verges managed for wildflowers, targeting 30% biodiversity net gain across the network.

Designed for everyone, costed for real

The working group set a hard target: no more than 10% of residents at risk of transport related social exclusion. If you can't reach a hospital or a job interview without a car, the city is failing its citizens. One ticket covers a journey across tram and train.

And the numbers are honest. Using reference class forecasting, which benchmarks against what similar projects actually cost rather than what their promoters hoped, the core transport network is estimated at £8.6 billion to £16 billion, funded by the value the commercial land in the City creates.

Existing villages within the area keep their streets, their character and their say. The plan is to weave them into the network, not pave through them.