The Cambridge Area Metro intrigues me. It could be transformative for the whole region, and the city.

Effectively, it could create a cross of tunnels from north to south and from east to west. It could link the station to the historic centre and out to west Cambridge. It could also links out to existing and potentially new growth areas: St Neots, Haverhill, Mildenhall, and Alconbury. It could allow for a bunch of other new settlements along these routes focused around the metro as the primary means of transport.

What vehicles on the metro lines could look like

This all sounds good, except I’m afraid that it will all be destroyed by car-centric development rather than people-first development. And we are not the first place to try this. Milton Keynes, on the main motorway between London and Birmingham, was built around the motorcar, with 70mph dual carriageways surrounding small neighbourhoods. If you like roundabouts and the inability of half the people to travel around independently, then Milton Keynes is great.

Other places have followed similar public-transport growth strategies. Copenhagen has the ‘hand’ model, with high-quality public transport lines along the fingers, with green space in the middle. All housing and development was concentrated around stops on this network, with cycle-friendly and walkable neighbourhoods around.

Copenhagen, which used the "hand" model

Similarly with the small village of Houten, on the railway south of Utrecht in the Netherlands, they expanded the village of a few hundred houses to tens of thousands, but there is no traffic congestion. They even raised the railway line up, so that it was easier to cycle underneath, and could easily design in lots of cycle parking spaces.

Houten is also special in that they followed the perimeter roadway model of development. The main road is around the outside, with effectively a bunch of cul-de-sacs branching off. The only way to drive anywhere is to go out to this main road, around to the entrance to the area you want to get to, and then back in. They also built an extensive network of cycleways and pathways that link these neighbourhoods with the central station. Houten now has the highest cycling levels anywhere in the world.

People talk about Copenhagen and Amsterdam having high cycling levels, but compared with Houten, they are dominated by car traffic and traffic congestion. Driving is also very easy in Houten. The ring road has a relatively high speed limit and is connected directly to the strategic road network. It is just not easy to drive trivially short distances quickly.

If the Metro initiative included Houten-style planning for all the developments that it will serve, we could have the highest productivity in the world from all those people cycling from their house to the metro and then whizzing to their jobs in an autonomous electric vehicle. We could have the lowest carbon footprint and best air quality. And we could transform the city of Cambridge from a car-dominated place to a place that is sized for people.

At our last monthly meeting, mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough James Palmer agreed to allow Camcycle to show him how Houten works, and explore how it came about. Perhaps we'll also get him on a bike and cycle from an industrial estate to a town centre train station. On the way seeing how so many people are liberated to move around their town without being forced into a car, such as children who can cycle independently to school or to visit their friends.