Cambridge South Station
A railway station serving the busy and thriving Cambridge Biomedical Campus
PROJECT STORY
The challenge
A railway station serving the busy and thriving Cambridge Biomedical Campus is essential for projected growth in jobs and visitors to be sustained.
The solution
Building a new station that aims to encourage green travel across the region.
The impact
The station will provide access to high-quality employment and help relieve congestion in the area by supporting the development of sustainable transport.
4,000
new homes in Cambridge
27,000
jobs by 2031
The challenge
Cambridge is one of the UK’s most successful and fastest growing cities. The Cambridge Biomedical Campus is an internationally significant health and life sciences cluster and is expected to accommodate 27,000 jobs by 2031. The Cambridge Local Plan 2018 identifies the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and the Cambridge Southern Fringe as an area of major change in Cambridge. It is envisaged that by 2031 new housing developments across the Cambridge Southern Fringe comprising an estimated 4000 new homes will have been built. A railway station serving the busy and thriving Cambridge Biomedical Campus is essential for projected growth in jobs and visitors to be sustained.
The solution
A new station that will connect the Cambridge Biomedical Campus with potential destinations such as central London, London Stansted Airport, Ely and Birmingham, as well as providing a gateway to Europe.
Network Rail appointed Arcadis to deliver town planning, environmental and heritage services, planning advice, as well as multi-disciplinary design services, including project and commercial management for the station. In addition, we provided input into the Transport and Works Act Order (TWAO) for the project.
The station will provide access to a growing area of high-quality employment and help relieve congestion in the local area by supporting the development of environmentally sustainable transport in Cambridge. In the future, East West Rail services from Bedford to Cambridge could serve the new station.
The impact
Building a new station in the South of Cambridge aims to encourage green travel across the region: unlike most railway stations, the design solution intentionally excludes car parks. It will also provide better and more inclusive access to the Biomedical Campus for everyone.
The site, which is situated in the Green Belt, between the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and Hobson’s Park, is tightly constrained, with a nature reserve, scheduled monument, Listed Building and Conservation Area all within close proximity.
As well as town planning, Arcadis is delivering the detailed design for the scheme. We contributed to option appraisal and selection and inputted to EIA Scoping and preparation of the Environmental Statement. Our Chartered Town Planners inputted in the preparation of a Land and Consent Strategy, and our heritage team carried out a detailed heritage assessment including designing and managing geophysical survey and archaeological evaluation within and in the vicinity of the scheduled monument.
To conduct this work, our Heritage team obtained Scheduled Monument Consent from Historic England. We also supported stakeholder engagement by using digital techniques to capture engagement, highlighting risks and visibility of technical discussions to all members of the project teams, which allowed the design team to be kept fully informed of stakeholder concerns.
Working with sub-contractor Architect, Fereday Pollard, we delivered the architectural elements of the scheme using 3D models, informed by UAV Drone survey, shared via a common Data Environment, allowing design models to be shared globally.
