Ten years ago this month, the review that planned this network was published. In the time it then took Greater Cambridge to appoint the consultants who would design its routes, Copenhagen's equivalent partnership of councils built a finished cycle route connecting one of its towns to the capital. A decade on, Greater Cambridge has finished one route of twelve.

Finish the Greenways

The comparison

What else this money buys

£108m, committed across a decade, is the entire cost of trying to give every village around Cambridge a safe way to cycle in. Here is what the same county spends on its roads.

01

One junction, twice the cycling programme

National Highways' own senior project manager for the A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet scheme, Paul Salmon, told the BBC in November 2025 that building "such a complex three tier junction" at the Black Cat roundabout "is why it costs half of the scheme cost" — the "most significant and complex part of the project."

Half of a confirmed £1bn road scheme — roughly £500 million — is being spent rebuilding a single roundabout.

Source: BBC News, 17 November 2025, "Half of £1bn work is on Black Cat roundabout alone", quoting National Highways senior project manager Paul Salmon. The scheme in full — ten miles of new dual carriageway and two rebuilt junctions between the Black Cat and Caxton Gibbet roundabouts — costs £1 billion.

By the standard this county spends on its roads, half of one junction alone would fund the entire twelve-route Greenways programme — twice over.

02

The wider comparison

None of this is an argument against building roads. It is an argument against the idea that £108m for the Greenways is a lot of money.

SchemeLength CostRoughly per mile
Greater Cambridge Greenways (all twelve routes) ≈25 miles (40km) of new off-road route £108m committed ≈£4.3m
A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet — the Black Cat junction alone one roundabout ≈£500m —
A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet — full scheme 10 miles £1 billion ≈£100m
A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon 21 miles £1.5 billion ≈£71m
Ely southern bypass (a county-scale scheme, not National Highways) just over 2 miles £49m ≈£23m

The Ely bypass alone — a single county road scheme just over two miles long — cost nearly half of everything committed to twelve cycling routes across the whole sub-region.

By the standard this county spends on its roads, £108m for the entire Greenways programme is a rounding error.

Sources: gov.uk — half-a-billion pound contract award · gov.uk — works to start on £1bn transformation · A14 end-of-scheme brochure (PDF) · Construction Index — Ely bypass cost escalation · the Greenways budget breakdown →