The audit
The ambition that was lost
The network was designed to cross the rivers, railways and trunk roads that divide this county. Those crossings are what got cut. Here is every one of the 98 interventions the 2016 review proposed, and what happened to it.
01
The crossings
New bridges or underpasses were proposed at twelve places — fourteen structures in all. Not one has been built. These are the items that decide whether a greenway is a network or a set of village improvements — you cannot negotiate your way across a river.
Two were downgraded to crossings at road level, and one of those has been built. Two are still on paper. The rest are gone.
The A1307 bridge at Hildersham became signals, which have been built; the Long Road underpass on the Comberton route became a parallel crossing, which awaits planning. The Tins Path railway bridge and the Bin Brook bridge survive in live schemes but remain unbuilt. One existing structure — the Canteloupe Farm accommodation bridge over the M11, which the 2016 review thought unobtainable — was brought into use by agreement. An underpass at Ditton Lane, proposed after 2016, is listed separately below.| Greenway | Proposed crossing | Scale | Status | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Waterbeach | New River Cam bridge north of Baits Bite Lock, linking the Waterbeach and Horningsea greenways | new bridge | Not in current programme | Recommended in both the Waterbeach and Horningsea sections of the 2016 review — one bridge serving two corridors, and the piece that would have joined the network either side of the Cam. Never entered the funded programme; GCP states funding is limited to the twelve set routes, and its FAQ acknowledges 'further opportunities' it cannot fund. |
| Fulbourn | New bridge over the railway on the Tins Path | new bridge | In design or planning | Kept: the outline business case identifies the Tins Path railway crossing as a critical bottleneck and includes its upgrade. Still unbuilt. A new alignment for phase 3 was approved in March 2025. The review paired the bridge with longer-term paths along the rail corridor towards the Chisholm Trail, Cambridge North and the Science Park; those are not in the scheme. |
| Linton | New route crossing under the A11 beside the River Granta | underpass | Scaled back | Not built. The preferred 2016 route under the A11 beside the Granta was dropped; Cambridge South East Transport phase 2, which has no confirmed funding, instead proposes new ramps to the existing A11 footbridge. |
| Linton | New bridge over the A1307 near Hildersham | new bridge | Scaled back | Replaced by an at-grade signalised crossing, which has been built. The bridge is not in the programme. |
| Sawston | Links across the A505 to Duxford, Hinxton and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, including a possible A505 bridge or underpass at Whittlesford Parkway | bridge/underpass | Not in current programme | Never progressed beyond the review's 'look further at opportunities'. |
| Melbourn | New bridge over the A505 into Royston | ~80 m span | Not in current programme | Advanced to Joint Assembly and Board discussion in 2023 and appeared on a Hertfordshire £37m active-travel wishlist, but has no funding and is not in the GCP programme. |
| Haslingfield | New path and bridge over the River Cam through the former Hauxton Treatment Works site | ~30 m span | Not in current programme | Not in the adopted route. |
| Barton | Upgrade the Granta Place to Fen Causeway route, including two new bridges | 2 bridges | Not in current programme | Not in the current programme. |
| Comberton | Replace the Bin Brook bridge on Burrell's Walk with a wider one | new bridge | In design or planning | Still in the scheme, unbuilt. |
| Comberton | Safe crossing of Long Road between Coton and Comberton — assumed to be a new underpass | underpass | Scaled back | The 2016 report assumed a grade-separated crossing, noting a concrete box could be installed quickly. The scheme now proposes a surface parallel crossing. |
| St Ives | New route linking Swavesey and Over, with a new bridge of 20m-plus span | 20 m + 1.6 km | Paused on cost | Consulted in 2023, then suspended on rising construction costs following a Board decision in September. |
| St Ives | New bridges to Holywell and Needingworth — one of 40m-plus span over the Great Ouse, one of 10m-plus, and 1.2km of new path | 40 m + 10 m | Not in current programme | Not in the programme. |
02
Off the highway, almost nothing
The 2016 review proposed about 54 km of new path away from roads — along field edges, old railways, rivers and bridleways. About 6 km of it exists, and only about 2.6 km of that was built by the programme after 2016. The review saw this coming.
"The temptation will undoubtedly be to prioritise schemes that are easily deliverable and particularly those where all the work can be done in highway land."
The 2016 review, section 15. It went on: "There is however a danger that these will not be the best routes in terms of anticipated numbers of users." Almost every missing route below needs land outside the highway boundary — which is why the land asks come first.Built
| Greenway | New path | Length | Status | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Swaffham | New off-road route between Stow-cum-Quy and Lode (already under way in 2016) | 2.2 km | Built and open | Already built: an off-road path from Stow-cum-Quy past Anglesey Abbey to Lode has been in use since about 2020, crossing the B1102 by the central refuge the 2016 review described. Local cyclists call that refuge inadequate; LTN 1/20 (Table 10-2) treats uncontrolled crossings, with or without a refuge, as suitable only on roads of 30mph or less with low traffic. The redesigned Anglesey Abbey crossing in the current plans has a near right-angle turn with no inner radius on a 3m path, tighter than LTN 1/20's reference cycle (Table 5-1) can comfortably follow. The Swaffham Greenway now uses this path, with changes planned only at its ends. |
| Linton | New link from Dame Mary Archer Way, Biomedical Campus, to Babraham Road Park & Ride | 1.5 km | Built and open | Built as Linton Greenway section 1; opened March 2023. |
| Linton | Complete the Babraham village link through the Institute grounds (already under way in 2016) | 1.2 km | Built and open | Built. |
| St Ives | New path link to Oakington | 300 m | Built and open | Delivered as a quick win — the Girton to Oakington link. |
| St Ives | New path link to Rampton | 800 m | Built and open | Delivered as a quick win — the Reynolds' Drove link. |
Not built
| Greenway | New path | Length | Status | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Waterbeach | New off-road route east of the A10, north Milton to south Waterbeach | 1.8 km | In design or planning | Became the spine of the adopted scheme; preferred route confirmed by the Board in September 2023, northern-section designs and land talks ongoing. |
| Waterbeach | New route from Waterbeach to Lode via Bottisham Lock, with a step-free crossing of the Cam at the lock | ~5 km | Not in current programme | Shown on the 2016 map as 'Possible Lode Link 1' and described as 'a long standing ambition, but needs landowner's agreement'. Never taken forward. With the Horningsea–Lode link and the Baits Bite bridge, it would have joined three corridors east of the Cam. |
| Horningsea | New Greenway link from Horningsea to Lode via Lode Fen | 4.5 km | Not in current programme | Never taken forward; the review had warned that building either this or the Cam bridge without the other would sharply reduce the benefit. |
| Swaffham | New off-road route through Stow-cum-Quy | 1 km | In design or planning | Described in 2016 as a challenging route needing landowner consent; still pre-planning. |
| Swaffham | New off-road route through Swaffham Bulbeck | 500 m | Not in current programme | Not in the current scheme. Since the November 2025 realignment the greenway starts at Swaffham Bulbeck, and local campaigners report it will stop at the western edge of the village: the footway through the village is to be resurfaced but stays a footway, because land for an off-road path has not been pursued. An existing public footpath could be upgraded to a bridleway and surfaced instead. Swaffham Bulbeck Parish Council has publicly objected to GCP's handling. |
| Linton | New paths linking Babraham High Street, Granta Park and the A505 path around the A11 | 2.4 km | Paused on cost | The A11 crossing and the Babraham links are folded into Cambridge South East Transport phase 2, which has no confirmed funding. Some work near Granta Park has been delivered: a new path to Granta Park and widened shared space on Newmarket Road, Little Abington, completed in autumn 2024. |
| Linton | New path between Great Abington and the A1307 | 750 m | In design or planning | Section 4 is being redesigned after a planning refusal over lighting and protected bat populations; construction could start 2027. |
| Linton | New Greenway between Hildersham and Linton along existing rights of way, linking both village centres | 2.5 km | Scaled back | Not progressed as a separate route. GCP has instead widened the existing path beside the A1307 (next item). A consultation on the remaining sections east of Linton Village College was planned for 2026. |
| Sawston | New link from Shelford Station to the A1301 along the disused railway corridor | 1.3 km | Paused on cost | The off-road railway link is paused because of rising construction costs. |
| Sawston | New path following the disused railway and River Granta between the A1301 and Sawston | 3 km | Paused on cost | Paused with the rest of the railway-corridor proposal. |
| Sawston | New path from the disused railway corridor to Spicers level crossing | 1.2 km | Not in current programme | Not in the current scheme. |
| Melbourn | New route from Harston to Button End on field edges | 2 km | Not in current programme | Superseded when the Haslingfield Greenway was re-routed away from the A10 corridor. |
| Haslingfield | New path from Haslingfield to the A10 following the existing bridleway | 2.4 km | Not in current programme | The 2016 favoured option (crossing the M11 at the Hauxton accommodation bridge) was abandoned when the route was re-planned via Grantchester. |
| Haslingfield | New path and bridge over the River Cam through the former Hauxton Treatment Works site | ~30 m span | Not in current programme | Not in the adopted route. |
| Barton | New upgraded path between Comberton and Barton along the road corridor | 1.9 km | In design or planning | Absorbed into the Comberton Greenway, whose planning application covers Comberton to central Cambridge. |
| Barton | New path from the Mullard Observatory to Little Eversden and Comberton Village College | 4 km | Not in current programme | The review's answer for villages 'with no route at all'; not taken up. |
| Comberton | New path on field edges and bridleway from Coton via Hardwick to Comberton Village College | 5 km | In design or planning | The largest surviving new off-road route in the programme; included in the 2026 planning application. |
| St Ives | New flood-relief paths in at least four locations using the busway embankment | 1.5 km | Paused on cost | Flood monitoring in the Swavesey area continues; no paths built. |
| St Ives | New path link to Willingham | 2 km | Scaled back | Partly done. GCP lists 'Willingham improvements to Busway link' as a quick win: improvements to the existing roadside path on Station Road. The 2km new path the review asked for, rating the Willingham link 'a high priority', was not built. |
| St Ives | New route linking Swavesey and Over, with a new bridge of 20m-plus span | 20 m + 1.6 km | Paused on cost | Consulted in 2023, then suspended on rising construction costs following a Board decision in September. |
| St Ives | New bridges to Holywell and Needingworth — one of 40m-plus span over the Great Ouse, one of 10m-plus, and 1.2km of new path | 40 m + 10 m | Not in current programme | Not in the programme. |
| St Ives | New Greenway link to Fenstanton | 1.6 km | Not in current programme | Given 'high priority' in 2016 and named the strongest case of all the St Ives links. Not in the current scheme. |
Also drawn on the 2016 maps
The review's maps sketch a few more links as possibilities without recommending them. They are not counted above, but they show how far the network was meant to reach.
- Little Shelford, under the M11, to the A10 corridor — "investigated", its value depending on the Melbourn Greenway.
- A railway-side route between Foxton and Hauxton — "could potentially link well with Great Shelford".
- Haslingfield to Harston.
- Grantchester to Trumpington.
- Fulbourn to the Wilbrahams and Bottisham — "not been surveyed as part of this study".
- Fulbourn to the A1307 near Babraham — "not considered a high priority at present".
- Hardwick to Caldecote, Bourn Airfield and Cambourne, and Toft to Bourn — not surveyed.
03
Improvements proposed since, and dropped too
Not everything worth building was in the 2016 review. Some improvements were identified later, as the schemes were designed — and then removed in the same way. We back them.
Underpass at Ditton Lane, carrying the route under the road towards Ditton Meadows (Bottisham Greenway)
Added after 2016: not in the 2016 review, which asked only to upgrade the route near the Ditton Lane / Fison Road junction. An underpass was later put forward and investigated, then rejected by GCP in June 2023 as 'poor value for money', citing utilities, flood risk, land cost and underpass safety. Camcycle told the Joint Assembly it was a missed 'game-changing' improvement. Nothing new replaces it: the signal-controlled crossing has been there for around twenty years, and the plans add only a parallel crossing of Fison Road, leaving greenway users on a narrow shared footway on the east side of Ditton Lane. The Marleigh cycleway, open since 2023, still stops here. We think the underpass should be reconsidered. The Bottisham route →Bonus failure
Beyond the twelve
The Chisholm Trail isn't one of the twelve Greenways — it's the cross-city spine that was meant to connect several of them to the station and Cambridge North. Campaigner Jim Chisholm first proposed it in 1998, nearly two decades before the Greenways review. It shows the same pattern outside the programme this audit otherwise tracks.
Phase 1 opened in December 2021, its budget having risen from £14m to £21m during delivery. Phase 2 — the section that actually closes the loop to Cambridge North — was projected in a March 2019 board paper to open with the rest of the trail by 2022. In October 2024, five years after that projection and three years after phase 1 opened, the Executive Board recorded only an "in principle" agreement with Network Rail for one sub-section. As of September 2026, no construction date has been set, and phase 2 does not appear in any of the programme's monthly public updates.
Sources: Cambridge Cycling Campaign — Newsletter 17, 1998, Jim Chisholm's original proposal · GCP — Chisholm Trail phase 2 · GCP — Board decisions on Chisholm Trail phase two, October 2024 · Board paper, March 2019 (PDF)04
The full audit
All 98 proposals, including upgrades and gap-filling paths. Filter by route, by the kind of work, or by what became of it. Roughly 36 of these are brand-new routes on corridors that had no cycle provision at all. Items marked "Added after 2016" were not in the review but are tracked because they are now part of the schemes.
| Greenway | Proposed intervention (2016) | Type | Scale | Status 2026 | What happened |
|---|