Cambridge South Station creates a new gateway into Campus

Ed Watson, Interim Managing Director for Cambridge Biomedical Campus Ltd, explains why the new railway station on its doorstep will be transformative for the largest centre of medical research and health science in Europe.

It’s an exciting time for Cambridge, which is rightfully being recognised as a place of huge national and international importance in driving economic growth and scientific discovery. From DNA sequencing to IVF, monoclonal antibody technology, modern computing and the rules of Association Football (particularly relevant during a World Cup year), innovation that happens here has a global impact, as well an economic one. The patent for the technology behind monoclonal antibodies, which was developed on our campus at the MRC’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology (known as the LMB) and underpins around of a third of the world’s new drugs, brings direct income into the Treasury.

But the institutions and companies which make Cambridge the most intense innovation cluster in Europe, and second in the world only to the San Jose, rely on the people with the right skills and ideas collaborating with each other. Even in the post-COVID era of instant messaging and online meetings, this requires the right people being in the right place at the right time.

The Government’s recent announcement that it will establish a Development Corporation for Greater Cambridge to meet “challenges with housing affordability, congested transport and infrastructure capacity that are limiting growth and threatening its position as a global centre of innovation” is welcome. This is because these are the same challenges we hear from the Cambridge Biomedical Campus community all the time.

Luckily, part of the solution is coming down the track this month. Cambridge South Train Station makes the Campus a stop on every journey between Cambridge and London and unlocks direct rail travel to 69 places across the UK. It’s a huge infrastructure project; It has taken over a decade or hard work and lots of investment to deliver, but for us, it represents more than just a train station, as I explain below. 

Connectivity drives collaboration. Even in the digital age, making it quicker and easier to meet partners accelerates innovation and drives scientific discovery. Getting from the LMB to the Francis Crick Institute in King’s Cross currently takes over an hour and a half. With Cambridge South it’s 50 minutes. It will be so much easier for international partners to get here from Stansted Airport and help the new collaboration between Cambridge and Manchester. It will be a key connection in future including East-West Rail connecting to Oxford and Cambridge South East Transport (CSET) linking to science parks across south Cambridge.

People from further away will have better access to job opportunities. More than 22,000 people currently work on the Campus, including over 750 apprentices, which makes the Campus the biggest employment site in city. Analysis shows that every 10 jobs created on the Campus already support a further 10 jobs around the country. Commuting from many destinations outside of the city will become easier, supporting economic growth in the surrounding region, whilst easing pressure on local roads.

The new station will also mean that those working on the Campus now and in the future can live further away, whilst still having an easy, sustainable commute. When we conducted a survey to inform our Housing Study in 2024, we found that 40% of people who work on our Campus are struggling with the cost of housing in Cambridge. Housing costs shouldn’t exclude people from accessing the wide range of job opportunities at every level in our internationally renowned organisations. World-leading science and healthcare requires the brightest minds and sharpest skills which Cambridge is famed for, but we also need to attract fresh talent from further afield.

Finally, the beating heart of our Campus is our hospitals, saving and improving the lives of patients from across the region. We have an estimated 37,000+ visitors to the site each day, many of whom are here for treatment or visiting patients. The ability to come to an appointment via train, especially for those who don’t drive, will hugely simplify travel when people are feeling at their worst, whilst helping ease the health inequalities which arise from people not being able to access the care available here.

With two new hospitals being built on site – the Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital and  Children’s Hospital – the positive impact we can have on patients’ lives across the region will soon grow.

We hope Cambridge South Station will enable us to build on our solid foundations. But it’s no silver bullet to the infrastructure challenges in a city which has seen a population increase of 18% over the past decade. We still need to invest in new acute hospital services, further transport initiatives and affordable housing. But that is for another day; lets celebrate a great start, which makes our Campus that bit more accessible for everybody.

Find out more about Cambridge South