Active County Cambridge Conference Walks

The 2026 Landor Active County conference took place in Cambridge at the West Hub site of Cambridge University, on 13-14th July 2026. It was attended by a wide range of delegates, most of whom were transport professionals involved in transport planning and infrastructure design, working in local authorities or private sector companies.

Cambridge Living Streets contributed to the conference by organizing two walks for delegates to explore active travel routes for walking/wheeling in Cambridge city centre. Twenty delegates joined the walks.

Route and Focus

Our route focused on exploring active travel infrastructure in Cambridge city centre. We planned a route with several short stops to highlight aspects of the city’s infrastructure, such as pedestrian-only and shared space streets, pavements and crossing points. The walk covered 3.8 miles (6.1k) and lasted around two hours, including stops.

The route was signed off by the County Council’s Active Travel team and County approved our risk assessment. The walk began by using the last section of the Comberton Greenway from the West Hub site. This takes cyclists and pedestrians along Adams Rd, “the UK’s first cycle street”. Our route then guided the delegates into the city centre via Grange Rd, Burrell’s Walk, Garrett Hostel Bridge and Trinity Lane. They viewed shared-use Trinity St, pedestrian-only Rose Crescent, Market Square, Market St and St Andrews St, cutting through the Grand Arcade towards Kings Parade and then to Queens Rd, Sidgwick Avenue and back along the Greenway to West Hub.

Assessing the walking/wheeling infrastructure

Since 2024 Cambridge Living Streets has organised a regular open access walking programme for members and interested walkers from across the city, encouraging them to assess the quality of the walking/wheeling infrastructure they encounter, using a walk assessment tool. This is a hand-out card that walkers complete after the walk and was designed drawing on key points from national and international walking surveys.

We decided to use this assessment tool with our delegates, as informed professionals with experience in assessing infrastructure. It focuses on three categories: “how safe to walk?”, “how direct to walk?” and “how pleasant to walk?”, and has possible outcomes of “good for walking”, “good and bad aspects” and “poor for walking”. Respondents choose an overall verdict: “pedestrians are the top priority”, “pedestrian needs are only partly met” or “pedestrians appear bottom of the list”.

Conference delegate assessments and responses

Not all delegates completed the risk assessment tool as some left the walk to explore the city centre or returned by bus. Of the 60% (n=12) who did complete the whole walk, 75% (n=9) assessed overall pedestrian needs as being “only partly met”. One delegate assessed the needs of pedestrians as being given “top priority” and two delegates viewed the route as demonstrating that pedestrian needs appeared “bottom of the list”. In making this assessment, the professionals agreed with our Cambridge Living Streets walkers that pedestrian needs are currently “only partially met” in the city centre.

In their responses delegates could choose which factors to rate as good, bad or ‘good and bad’ for walking. They did this by means of ticks on a particular item or by circling the text in a particular box in the three categories ‘how safe”, how direct” and “how pleasant”. This means that for some categories below total percentage reporting adds up to more than 100% as some items appear in relation to two issues: eg how safe and how direct.

The highest rated factor seen as good for walking was the low traffic and noise level:

• 75% of delegates agreed that “traffic speed, noise and volume low”.

Pavement quality divided delegate opinion:

• 25% agreed that pavements were “good quality, safe width and obstruction free”
• 42%, in contrast, identified “uneven pavement quality, with some street clutter”
• 50% pointed to “inadequate, damaged pavements, cluttered, too narrow”
• 33% felt footways were “cluttered” including “pavement parking”

Delegates also reported on their experience of crossing roads, which again divided opinion:

• 33% agreed that there were “safe, responsive lights, well built crossings”
• 50% however felt that “crossings safe but timed to suit traffic“
• 25% reported that the route “lacks safe crossings – focus on traffic flow”
• 25% felt “crossing roads easy and good access to bus stops”
• Shade, seating and lighting in good places 11%

They also had some differences of view about how direct and pedestrian-focused
footways were:

• 25% agreed with the statement “footways direct and walking given priority”
• 66%, in contrast to this, reported that “footways don’t always reflect walker desire line”
• 58% agreed that “some efforts made to meet pedestrian needs”
• 16% noted that “desire line crossings less easy”

Written feedback from the assessment cards

Walkers also provided detailed feedback on their assessment cards. Key points that were made focused on specific junctions, crossings and stretches on footway. They highlighted:

• Issues with the lights on some parts of the route
• Commuted sums available for surfaces and road gullies
• Gradient in some locations not adequate to slow vehicles
• Some routes not easily accessible (very narrow pavements)
• Positioning of Greenway remote from city centre
• Need to use preventative treatment on the Greenway otherwise surface will decay
• Some crossings only have topcoat of red paint which will quickly get rubbed away
• Worst I’ve seen in a long professional career; terrible pedestrian environment

Conclusion: reflecting on the overall verdicts

This is a small sample but significant for two main reasons.

• First, the responses are from transport professionals from other towns and cities in the UK so looking at Cambridge with new eyes.
• Second, they are looking at the city through a professional lens and with knowledge of initiatives and possibilities elsewhere.

We should take seriously the overall verdict by 75% responded that “pedestrian needs are only partly met.” For a city like Cambridge, that is reported by Sustrans as a prime walking and cycling city, this is not a supportive verdict.

There is a third reason to pay attention as well. The professionals’ verdict matches the verdict of the Cambridge Living Streets walkers reached in the 30 walks of the 2025 season.

• 23% of walks were judged by CLS walkers to have fully met pedestrian needs, all except one of which took place across fields, meadows, footpaths and through allotments: in other words sites of leisure walking
• 67% of walks were judged as only partly meeting pedestrian needs
• The remaining 10% split walker opinion between fully and partly met