In message , at 01:13:15 on
Mon, 31 Mar 2014, Paul Corfield remarked:

In Cambridge, for example, three of the four vehicular river crossings
will be shut, which would cause chaos on a normal day even without lots
of other roads closed too. I can't see a way to make the cross-City bus
routes "join up" without a two mile gap between the severed ends.

I am not intimately familiar with Cambridge's road layout or bus
network so can't comment in any sensible fashion.

Here's the closures:
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News...r-road-closure
s-announced-for-central-Cambridge-20140320143455.htm

With the only road bridge still open about 25% off to the right
(Elizabeth Way, see the next map).

Here's the bus map:
http://www.stagecoachbus.com/uploads/cambridge_mar14a4.pdf

With routes exclusively using the three bridges that are closing. The
whole area marked "City Centre" is closing.

On top of that you have the longer distance buses (including the Guided
Bus) and buses serving five P&R dotted round the perimeter. Of that lot
lot just one (A P&R from beyond the Science Park) uses the Elizabeth Way
bridge.

http://www.thebusway.info/central-cambridge.aspx

Shows the problem with using Elizabeth Way as al alternative route
because the cross-roads at Parkside/East Rd (just left of where it says
"Cambridge City Centre"[1]) is where the race starts and is closed the
longest. The area under that CCC name is a maze of Victorian Terraces
that you can't use as alternative vehicular routes.

[1] That's the name of the map, not a place; the actual centre is more
like Arts Theatre/Corn Exchange.

I watch the TDF every year and see it whizz its way through hamlets,
villages, towns and cities across France (plus Belguim / Spain / Italy
/ Switzerland as required). The thing that always strikes me is the
fact that people love to watch the race and in the larger conurbations
you can see people still managing to get around and going about their
business. I accept the UK does not have the same level of interest in
cycle racing as France does but the TDF is a spectacle and I, for one,
am happy to see it back in London.

I'm not against the race as such, I'm more against it cutting so many
large and busy places in half on a weekday.

I think people are forgetting that we have had the race in the UK a
few times before and certainly in London. I have no recollection of
mass complaints the last time the Tour was in Central London or the
ride out through South East London into Kent.

People like the London Marathon too, but that's on a Sunday.
--
Roland Perry