The Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority approved Professor Lord Robert Mair’s appointment to lead the Cambridgeshire Autonomous Metro (CAM) special purpose vehicle (SPV), which has been incorporated with the name One CAM Limited.
Now is the moment to deliver a truly pioneering system benefitting people and businesses across the region for decades to come.
Lord Robert Mair
The vision for CAM is an expansive metro-style network that seamlessly connects regional settlements, major city fringe employment sites and key satellite growth areas across the region with key railway stations and Cambridge city centre, with the aim of helping to nurture and sustain long-term regional economic growth. CAM is currently expected to use a technologically advanced, sustainable, highly flexible trackless electric vehicle – a special purpose vehicle (SPV). The CAM network will comprise both tunnelled and surface elements and will be delivered over the next decade.
On his appointment Lord Mair said: “I am delighted to be recommended as the first chair of the CAM SPV board. I grew up, went to school and graduated in Cambridge, returning to the university in 1998 after 27 years in industry. With this background I have a very strong affection and affiliation with this great city and the region. The vision for CAM is exciting. A flexible, innovative system will be essential in creating the better transport future the region needs and deserves, while also delivering the decarbonised journeys needed to help safeguard the environment. The unprecedented effects of a global pandemic have also caused a significant shift in how people travel, which must also be factored into any new transport scheme.
The SPV project will lead the effort to create the £2bn public transport system linking towns and villages with Cambridge, including an underground section beneath the city using rubber-tyred vehicles. The SPV was set up as a separate company to take responsibility for delivery of the metro, which the Combined Authority hopes could be in place by the end of the decade.
The next steps will be the recruitment of the SPV Board, with recommended appointees set to be brought back to the November meeting. Once fully established, the SPV will provide the dedicated expertise and resource needed to deliver a scheme of the size and scale of CAM.