Your Sheffield Transport Solutions

[muddycoffee]

Originally Posted by Steel City Suburb

How hard is it to get this right?

When they were announcing the original scheme to the public, there was much annoyance and complaining coming from this part of the city. However I didn't say anything against it at the time, I was waiting to see what the "experts" would do, and I stuck up for their point of view in that there are many problems to overcome.

Now it is clear that the south part of the scheme is a complete fuck up, all it does is hold traffic in long tailbacks.

Further toward the city they downgraded the excellent tidal contraflow system ten years ago. The planners claimed that the system was confusing, but I know someone who was an insider and the real reason was that when they finally fixed and rebuilt the road bridge over the river sheaf it was much cheaper to narrow the roadway and restrict the bridge to a single lane in each direction.
So now heeley bottom and meersbrook are huge bottlenecks every morning and the pinch point is now the very same bridge. This is clearly a short term cost cutting measure that will probably add to traffic mysery for thousands of people for decades.

[jozblade]

Originally Posted by muddycoffee

Sheffield has a longstanding reputation from around the 1980s onward in trying to restrict traffic going into the town. Does anyone know if other cities do this too, in my experience other cities have retained wider roads. Maybe we should return to opening out roadways and removing all the bottlenecks and bollards to improve traffic flow instead.

In Manchester the roads leading into the city centre seem to be much wider and open and then similar routes in Sheffield.

The Oxford Road corridor seems to function quite well even though it is the busiest bus route in Europe. I think it might run smoothly as there is another wide dual carriageway (well the part nearer to town) that runs parallel and that seems to take most of the traffic from the south of the city. You can drive in a straight line from Didsbury, up Kingsway and then towards town in pretty much a straight line. Seems to work quite well.

[muddycoffee]

it is difficult to compare sheffield to manchester as manchester is much flatter and more spread out. In sheffield due to our steep hills the city has developed with narrow streets and houses with small gardens due to trying to get as many houses on each sloping street as possible.

I spent many years as a field engineer and I had many regular sites in manchester. I always felt that manchester had superb streets but awful signs and it was easy to get lost. Whereas sheffield had awful roads but good signs.

[BarryPseudonym]

They are currently remodelling the junction where Shoreham Street meets Charlotte Road and it looks like they are narrowing the junctions and making some streets one way.

More removal of rat-runs forcing us all on the same routes, leading to more traffic jam misery.

I just don't understand how it's justified. Far better to leave it alone and spent the money on something more worthwhile.

[muddycoffee]

Originally Posted by BarryPseudonym

They are currently remodelling the junction where Shoreham Street meets Charlotte Road and it looks like they are narrowing the junctions and making some streets one way.

More removal of rat-runs forcing us all on the same routes, leading to more traffic jam misery.

I just don't understand how it's justified. Far better to leave it alone and spent the money on something more worthwhile.

I agree, as I get older I am starting to get more and more perplexed about this. It clearly is a long term strategy which has continued through various changes of local government for about 30 years and it has failed. Especially when you have regard to the gridlock that was caused this week when a bus broke down and nothing could get past because they had narrowed the roads.
And also at christmas when the city grinds to a complete halt and registers the slowest moving rush hour in the UK.

It is about time that they started to reverse the restrictions and open up the rat runs again. Even if they only do it in the winter when it snows that would be a start.

[yogh]

How/why would you use Shoreham Street as a shortcut? I don't get it.

[arepeejee]

Getting to south sheffield from Town. It routes you up granville or east bank rd.

Shorham you can head up onto Gleadless road and onto the outer ringroad from there.

Very handy!

[muddycoffee]

Once again reminiscing to the heeley bypass which was never built, you can still see the green stripe across the hill where it should have been, I wonder what the traffic flow would have been like now 25 years later.

[dinp]

Originally Posted by muddycoffee

It is quite amusing to see what they are currently doing in woodseats to the roadway near the junction of Abbey Lane.

Several years ago they reduced the main road A61 ( chesterfield road / meadowhead ) to a single lane in each direction so that there would be permanent car parking spaces along the whole of woodseats. They put a completely stupid bus gate on Meadowhead which basically doesn't work properly and causes annoyance to bus drivers and other traffic.
This was an extremely expensive scheme which was supposed to increase the traffic flow through the district, but it has been surveyed and found recently that it has slowed traffic down.

What they are doing now is taking big bites out of the pavement so that they can remodel the Abbey Lane junction again. Now they are going to have a left turn lane so the traffic clears Abbey lane much faster.

Clearly despite all the arguments for and against, the previous road scheme didn't suceed. How did we get to a position where highway experts are allowed to spend millions of public money on an experiment restricting traffic flows only to be forced to reverse them.

Sheffield has a longstanding reputation from around the 1980s onward in trying to restrict traffic going into the town. Does anyone know if other cities do this too, in my experience other cities have retained wider roads. Maybe we should return to opening out roadways and removing all the bottlenecks and bollards to improve traffic flow instead.

Is this a left turn lane into Abbey Lane from the A61? I was still living in Sheffield before they changed the road layout and whilst it wasn't perfect, the queues were nowhere near as bad as they are now.

I have to say though, from my experience in dealing with highway matters, they are often the most frustrating part of the planning process. There's very little room for negotiation and the officers seem hell bent on sticking to set specifications, often to the detriment of the overall scheme.

[muddycoffee]

Originally Posted by dinp

Is this a left turn lane into Abbey Lane from the A61? I was still living in Sheffield before they changed the road layout and whilst it wasn't perfect, the queues were nowhere near as bad as they are now.

Actually I think it is a left turn onto A61 (town centre bound) from abbey lane with a give way instead of the traffic lights that are there now.

What they are doing at the moment is narrowing the pavement at the front door of the Abbey pub, they are reinstigating an extra lane.

In the other direction they have widened the road onto the pavement as it bears left up the hill. I can only assume there will be a right turn lane with enough capacity for 20 or so cars to wait to turn right onto Abbey lane.

[dinp]

Originally Posted by muddycoffee

Actually I think it is a left turn onto A61 (town centre bound) from abbey lane with a give way instead of the traffic lights that are there now.

What they are doing at the moment is narrowing the pavement at the front door of the Abbey pub, they are reinstigating an extra lane.

In the other direction they have widened the road onto the pavement as it bears left up the hill. I can only assume there will be a right turn lane with enough capacity for 20 or so cars to wait to turn right onto Abbey lane.

Doesn't solve the A61 problem though does it!?

[BarryPseudonym]

I had my first journey on the M1 today since the 50mph speed restrictions were removed and took out months worth of frustration by travelling as fast as my car would allow. Joy.

[dinp]

Is that the J25-28 section? Thank fook for that!

[yogh]

Originally Posted by arepeejee

Getting to south sheffield from Town. It routes you up granville or east bank rd.

Shorham you can head up onto Gleadless road and onto the outer ringroad from there.

Very handy!

I don't understand how you would use Shoreham Street to access either of those roads. They don't connect to Shoreham Street at all, yet have direct access (almost) onto the eastern roundabout of the ring road.

[arepeejee]

Yeah but its jammed up with cars. Sometimes its quicker to take a round-a-bout but quieter route than it is to sit in traffic burning up petrol.

[yogh]

Originally Posted by arepeejee

Yeah but its jammed up with cars. Sometimes its quicker to take a round-a-bout but quieter route than it is to sit in traffic burning up petrol.

So you would go south along Shoreham Street, east along Charlotte Road, north up Queens Road, and then east onto Duchess Road? To avoid the congestion at the eastern ring road roundabout?

[arepeejee]

Trying to go anywhere around the Velocity tower on the inner ring road is nigh on impossible around rush hour. Ditto for sheaf street - in both directions.

So yeah, it might be a longer way round, but you're going against the flow of dense traffic by doing that - but getting to where you want to be quicker.

[yogh]

Originally Posted by arepeejee

Trying to go anywhere around the Velocity tower on the inner ring road is nigh on impossible around rush hour. Ditto for sheaf street - in both directions.

So yeah, it might be a longer way round, but you're going against the flow of dense traffic by doing that - but getting to where you want to be quicker.

Why are those two areas so congested?

[arepeejee]

Because of what Muddycoffee said - all the traffic is being filtered into one route where possible. Forcing you to otherwise go down one way sections or out of your way.

Your body wouldn't function without capillaries & veins and only having arteries - so why would traffic be any different to that? Yet - someone at traffic planning seems to think that age old road design and town planning tried and tested for years doesn't apply to Sheffield.

[AndrewC]

This thread has suddenly become very 'Sheffield Forum' all of a sudden!

I'm not going to pretend that Transport Planners are angels but they do have to juggle a mass conflict of various road users and far higher traffic volume than has ever had to be managed in this city before so lets be reasonable shall we? To suggest we should return the road system to how it was in the 70's a bit of a nonsense since the city and the world have both changed greatly since then...