Report comment

Although improved travel connections between Cambridge and Oxford would of course be welcome, there is a real danger that an obsession with 'corridors' may distract from a more rounded debate about the dysfunctionality of each city, solutions to which are more likely to be found in their immediate sub-regions rather than in strategic 'corridors'. In Cambridge's case, with no statutory regional planning framework in place since its abolition in 2011, all hopes must in the short term be placed in our new Mayor's non-statutory development framework for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. Let's hope that this competition does not distract the authorities from making the tough local choices that Cambridge (and Oxford) urgently need.