The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway is a guided busway and bus rapid transit that connects Cambridge, Huntingdon and St Ives in Cambridgeshire, England. It is the longest guided busway in the world, surpassing the O-Bahn Busway in Adelaide, South Australia.
Two guided sections make up of the route. The northern section, which uses the course of the former Cambridge and Huntingdon railway, runs through the former stations of , and . The southern section, which uses part of the former Varsity Line to Oxford, links Cambridge railway station, Addenbrooke's Hospital and the park-and-ride site at Trumpington via housing on the Clay Farm site.
Services are operated by Stagecoach in Huntingdonshire and Whippet, which have exclusive use of the route for five years in exchange for providing a minimum service frequency between 07:00 and 19:00 each weekday. Specially adapted buses are used: the driver does not need to hold the steering wheel on the guided sections of the busway. A total of 2,500,000 trips were made in the first year of operation.
The busway was proposed in the 2001 Cambridge-Huntingdon Multi-Modal Study, which recommended widening the A14 road and the construction of a guided busway along the old railway lines. Construction began in March 2007 and it was opened on 7 August 2011 after a succession of delays and cost overruns.
The original cost estimate of £116 million rose to £181 million by December 2010. An independent review of the project was announced on 21 September 2010, in which the Cambridge MP, Julian Huppert, described the busway as a "white elephant". A court case with BAM Nuttall, the main contractor, was settled by Cambridgeshire County Council in August 2013.
Overview The busway links Cambridge, in East Anglia, with St Ives, Huntingdon and Northstowe (a proposed new town) to the north-west, and with the M11 motorway to the south. The route includes two sections of guided operation, a bus-only road and other places with on-street operation in conventional bus lanes. New park and ride sites have been built at Longstanton and at St Ives, with a tarmac cycle track/bridleway alongside some sections of the route. The final scheme includes bus priority and real-time passenger information system displays at busway bus stops, and subsequent separate funding and works to better link those stops to local businesses for pedestrians and cyclists.
A total of 2,500,000 trips were made in the first year of operation, which Atkins reported was 40% higher than the predicted figure. Bus use along the corridor was estimated to have increased by 33% over the same period. Before opening, the contractor had predicted that an estimated 11,500 journeys per day would be made on the busway. The scheme was predicted to cause a direct reduction in traffic on the busy parallel A14 road of 5.6% (rising to 11.1% with the new Park & Ride sites), although as other traffic re-routes to the freed-up road space from other parts of the local road network, the net reduction is predicted to be 2.3%. The overall scheme was "not intended to solve the congestion problems on the A14" by itself, but will rather have an overall effect across the local road network, and be complementary to planned improvements on the A14.
Route
Starting at Huntingdon railway station and town centre, buses travel on normal roads to St Ives. From here the busway follows the path of the former Cambridge and Huntingdon railway to a new park and ride site south of the town, where it becomes guided. The buses stop at Swavesey, Longstanton, Oakington and Histon, with a request stop for the nature reserve at Fen Drayton. Should a proposed new town at Northstowe be built, further stops would be opened, with the Northstowe developers Gallagher Construction being encouraged to build the busway through the development beforehand.
Upon entering Cambridge, the route diverges. One route has stops at Cambridge Regional College and Cambridge Science Park, before it rejoins the road network into central Cambridge. The other joins the road network at Orchard Park (formerly Arbury Park), before continuing to the city centre. The two forks converge at Cambridge bus station for the journey to Cambridge railway station. Beyond Cambridge railway station the buses are guided along the former Cambridge-Oxford railway (The Varsity Line) south to Addenbrooke's Hospital and Trumpington Park and Ride. This section last saw a scheduled passenger train in 1967.
Infrastructure
The busway is designed for buses travelling at , slowing to where it crosses public highways. Bus drivers are asked to drive as they would do on a normal road. Guidance is achieved using the guidewheel-on-concrete-kerb method, with the busway constructed from pre-cast concrete sections that are long and wide. Additionally, the guide wheels will aid close positioning at slightly modified bus stops within the on-street sections.
The busway is wide, consisting of two wide tracks separated by a central reservation of . Between Cambridge and St Ives there is also a wide (maximum) bridleway/maintenance track to one side and a evacuation strip to the other creating a total width of . Where necessary it is narrower; for example through the Trumpington cutting where there is a single busway with a narrower maintenance-only track giving a total width of approximately . In 2010, proposals were made to reduce the width of the bridleway, narrowing it to and increasing the height in order to combat flooding. Elevated sections have two evacuation strips at busway level with the bridleway/maintenance track at the base of the embankment. The bridleway is usable by people on foot, bicycle and horse.
The width of the busway is narrower than the width of a single-carriageway rural all-purpose road built to 2009 standards (excluding attendant verges and footpaths/cyclepaths in both cases). A conventional road would have been too wide to fit on top of existing railway embankments and across the under-bridges along parts of the route. The maintenance track is either adjacent to the busway on flat land, or to one side at the foot of the former railway embankments—the combined width of the maintenance track and the busway being considerably wider than that of the railway it had replaced. To negotiate Trumpington Cutting on the southern section, a narrower maintenance track was required, along with the use of a bi-directional single-track busway to fit the width of the former double-track railway line. The southern section is restricted to single-decker buses. In May 2012, the County Council received a petition calling for better night-time lighting for the bridleway alongside the southern section, and the need for this was subsequently acknowledged by the Council. Work on lighting was completed in autumn of 2015.
Services
Current services (as of August 2025) Route A Operated by Stagecoach, Route A operates between Trumpington Park & Ride, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge City Centre, Orchard Park and St Ives. Six buses an hour operate all day on Monday to Friday between Trumpington Park & Ride and St Ives Park & Ride, with alternating services extending into St Ives town centre; a reduced service runs 2-3 buses per hour on Saturdays and hourly on Sundays. Route B Operated by Stagecoach, Route B operates between Cambridge City Centre, Cambridge North, Science Park, St Ives, Huntingdon and Hinchingbrooke Hospital. Throughout the day, the route occasionally expands, making its final stop at Long Road Sixth Form College (replacing the now ended C service, also operated by Stagecoach). The Monday to Saturday off-peak timetable has three buses an hour. From late-2020 to mid-2021, Route B also served Trumpington Park & Ride and Addenbrooke's Hospital, providing additional capacity on the southern section of the busway whilst social distancing was in place. Route U Operated by Whippet, Route U was launched in July 2016, and is subsidised by the University of Cambridge. It currently operates from the Biomedical Campus and Addenbrooke’s Hospital to Cambridge railway station, Queens' College, the West Cambridge Site and Eddington. There are up to 4 buses an hour during the day Mondays to Fridays, up to three buses an hour during the day on Saturdays, and up to two buses an hour on Sundays. There is a half-hourly service in the evenings Mondays to Saturdays. Whippet operated this service with seven Volvo/Wright Eclipse single-decker buses, with Universal branding in blue colours. However, in September 2023, the Eclipses were replaced by nine Battery-Electric Mellor Sigma 12 vehicles. Route T1 Operated by Whippet for the Tiger Bus Network,http://cambridgeshirepeterborough-ca.gov.uk/tiger-bus-routes Route T1 was launched in May 2025, and is subsidised by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority. It currently operates from Huntingdon Railway Station to Cambridge City Centre, serving Huntingdon Bus Station and Fenstanton, before joining the Guided Busway at Swavesey and following the same route as the B into the city centre. However, it doesn't serve Cambridge North Station. It is an hourly service operating Mondays to Saturdays. Connecting routes In mid-2020, Stagecoach replaced several branches of the busway A & B with connecting routes to locations not on the core busway route. This includes Peterborough, now served by Route 904 and Royston on Route 915, but also Routes V1-V5 running to rural areas such as Ramsey and Chatteris. Initially these services were operated by Stagecoach; however, since October 2022 most of these services are now operated by smaller independent operators.
+RouteOperatorOriginIntermediate PointsDestinationOff-Peak buses per hourAStagecoach in The FensTrumpington Park and RideCambridge Biomedical CampusCambridge railway stationCentral CambridgeShire HallHiston & ImpingtonLongstanton Park and RideSt Ives6bphBStagecoach in The FensCentral CambridgeCambridge North StationCambridge Science ParkHiston & ImpingtonLongstanton Park and RideSt IvesHuntingdon railway stationHinchingbrooke Hospital3bphUGo WhippetCambridge Biomedical CampusCambridge railway stationCentral CambridgeRobinson CollegeCavendish LaboratoryEddington/Girton4bphT1Go WhippetCambridge Drummer St Bus StationCambridge Science ParkHiston & ImpingtonLongstanton Park and RideSwaveseyFenstantonHuntingdon railway stationHuntingdon bus station1bph
Initial services (on opening in 2011) Figures published in 2004 by Cambridgeshire County Council proposed that it would begin operation with six buses per hour and build up to 20 buses per hour into Cambridge during peak periods by 2016.
Two operators, Stagecoach in The Fens and Whippet, committed to buying new buses and running commercial services on the scheme.
The council had previously held talks with Cavalier (owner of Huntingdon and District, prior to being purchased by Stagecoach) and another operator.
Originally Stagecoach route A operated three times an hour from St Ives Park and Ride to Trumpington (Monday to Saturday daytime only) and route B operated three times an hour from Huntingdon to Cambridge (with an hourly evening service) Mondays to Saturdays. On Sundays route B ran three times per hour between Cambridge and St Ives, with one journey per hour continuing to Huntingdon. There was no Sunday evening service. Whippet also operated a route C from Somersham and St Ives to Cambridge.
To operate their services, Stagecoach ordered ten Eclipse/B7RLE single-decker buses, to be manufactured by Wrightbus and Volvo, and ten Alexander Dennis Enviro400/Scania N230UD double-deckers. All the specially-branded vehicles were equipped with leather seats, air chill or air conditioning, real time information, and free Wi-Fi. The new buses were deployed on Stagecoach's other services prior to the opening of the busway, having cost the operator a total of £3 million plus £1 million in staffing and training costs.
Withdrawn services Whippet C