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i would guess they're waiting for Fargate itself to be completed - before starting on E-C...? (which would make sense to me)

Sounds great, i'm sure the people who end up living there will love it. i wish we could be so ambitious in this country. ... meanwhile, *in* this country, British-Folding-Bike-Company Brompton want to build a new factory. The Highways Agency have blocked the plan, saying it needs a bigger employee-car-park. (Brompton have said they don't really want employees driving to work) Brompton have changed the plans, to include a small car park. The HA have blocked the plan, saying that the small car park will lead to an increase in traffic. How are we supposed to ever build anything in this country?!

my words, not theirs, to be fair!

i was just answering a question. there is a ... request (?) from Sheffield's Cycle campaigners to consider, where possible, if designated cycle routes could be ... designed/whatever so that the angle-of-attack can minimise the danger of slipping. which seems reasonable to me...

they're slippery when wet and dangerous to cross at an angle. Anything less than 45° can do it some of the routes that cyclists use end up leading them over the tram tracks - at an angle. For example : heading east along Glossop road - crossing the ring road onto West street. (I've seen a few crashes here).

they look more or less like a normal street bin - but the visible bit leads down into a massive buried container. once a week (or so) this buried container is lifted out, and emptied. This is now standard all over the world - there's even one in Hathersage! (so i'm told) ... If we want to see the space above the shops used as flats (and we really do) - they need somewhere to put their household waste - we can't fill Fargate with hundreds of wheelie bins. So... *some* of the new buried bins will be locked - so that only key holders (residents) can access them.

The Fargate work includes : massive underground bins - at least partly so that the enormous space *above* the shops can potentially become residential (see also : Front Door Scheme) Hostile Vehicle Mitigation SUDS (elements of 'Grey to Green') and I think this is still happening : integrated power points - so that future markets / events don't need diesel generators. think of it an enormous digging project, with resurfacing happening as a convenient result. and Fargate is a thousand years old, you can't dig a hole without finding problems - each problem needs resolving, and takes time. The nightmare has got to be the discovery of an unexploded WW2 bomb, i'm fairly sure this hasn't happened yet!

because that's not all they're doing.

not even close.

without that extra layer of government, we don't get any devolved-region funding. if we're *actually* interested (and not just enjoying a good old-fashioned Yorkshire moan), the projects in receipt of regional funding are not kept secret - i'm not a personal googling service. (off the top of my head: the latest round of Parkway widening, the regeneration of Fargate, and the CastleMarket site ?) Basically, the government aren't offering grants to cities/regions *unless* they're devolved - that's the system.

The first Mayor - Dan Jarvis actually managed to get the Sheffield City Region off the ground. - achieving the near impossible job of getting all the councils and elected officials to sign up to a joint Partnership. Oliver Coppard is (or seems to be) intent on brining the buses back under Public control, and saving Doncaster airport.

who isn't these days?

...the Castle Park project ? (and Heart of the City, Pounds Park, Grey to Green, Fargate, West Bar, etc)

This is only my opinion, but it seems to me that there are fewer of them around in the last year or so... let's be honest, people who bought them would be buying at the cheap end (£100-200), not the expensive end (£500-1000). Cheap batteries, chargers, motors, electrics, etc. does not suggest a product that will stand up to years of daily use. (and being ragged around at full throttle by bored teenagers isn't going to help) my instinct tells me that a lot of the people who bought them, now have a dead one, sitting in the shed (or dumped in a hedge). They have little desire to spend another few hundred pounds repeating the experience. of course i could be wrong. (Done right, e-scooters could be a great way to help people get around. i thoroughly approve of the general idea)

i think you've missed the question... ... there may even be some value in using a London-based firm - it's quite possible that they will be able to filter-out the aspects of Sheffield that we obsess over, that are essentially worthless in terms of advertising. example : We're a bit too fond of reminiscing over irrelevant trivia such as Cole's Corner, or The Hole in The Road, or the ****ing Castle Market. if we want to sell Sheffield to the outside world - either for tourism, or attracting new businesses, we can't keep whanging on about The Eggboxes.

ok, here's the attention you craved...

edited

there are phds that could be written on that subject, it's huge, and multifactorial. if i may be permitted to condense it to a sentence or 2? Young people leave villages, only old people are moving in. This means fewer (and older) people overall, who need fewer things. i'm not talking about "vast estates" - i'm talking about turning some tiny villages, into normal-sized villages. big enough to support a few facilities. you're talking about peat-bog, scrubland, and forest, not fields of grass. yeah, because farmers just love people roaming around their sheep-grazing fields... (and i absolutely promise, the number of people wandering around the fields that neighbour my Dad's village, revitalising their mental health, is exactly zero) . i did predict this would happen - in my first post. we have a serious housing crisis - there are a few obvious solutions, with numerous significant parallel benefits. but we're paralysed, because if you suggest building some houses in the countryside, people's head's start exploding. i'm suggesting slowly turning places like Dungworth, into places like Worral. And people are worried about all the crime that'll bring.... (because the first thing you'll think of when i mention Worral, is all the crime gangs... [/sarcasm] )

why? why is better that the schools/pubs/shops/etc. all end up closing? The Royal Hotel will be sold, and turned into a house. Are we seriously trying to argue that this is better for Dungworth than building enough houses to keep the pub open?

1) we need houses. 2) hundreds (thousands?) of villages are literally dying - because their population is too small to support shops/schools/pubs/churches/cricket clubs/whatever. 3) we're talking about a field, or 2, of nothing more interesting than grass, in locations where there is no shortage of fields.

it's an impossible job. Because *we* won't accept any of the solutions. Watch this : The Royal Hotel (pub) in Dungworth is closing. This is very sad news, but totally unsurprising, Dungworth is tiny. If we want small villages to have viable (profitable) pubs in them, those villages need a population large enough to support a pub through the 11months of the year that aren't December. (The Royal Hotel is known for it's support for the local carols) Solution, build 500 houses in Dungworth. and repeat this for every small village with a pub that can't stay open. there, that'll be ~1million houses that get built - in places that have existing facilities literally *begging* for more people to live nearby (schools, shops, post offices, churces, etc.) downside: we lose a few fields of grass (who ****ing cares?).

i said that, and within certain parameters, i stand by it. 20-odd years of fuel prices, and give or take the odd bump or dip here and there, the inflation-adjusted price has remained fairly constant. I *suppose* you could call it from the other direction, and say that fuel has been expensive for more than 20 years, but i'll believe that anyone really thinks fuel is expensive when i see anyone driving like it. in other words: people love moaning about the price of fuel, they also love using as much as possible.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59034854 allowing for inflation, could someone please point at the 'war on the motorist' ? on the graph over the last 25 years?

"war on the motorist" (follow the rules you were definitely told about, tested on, and are widely available for your review, at your convenience. Or there's a small risk of a small fine) this is probably as good a place as any to point out that petrol today, is (more or less exactly) the same price it was 10 years ago - adjusting for inflation petrol is about as cheap as it's ever been. Please spare some sympathy for the poor motorist.

Should we be worried? Yes and No. No : the lights won't go out. Alongside the other numbers you mention, we're also producing 7GW of wind power, and around 2GW of solar - yes, even on a cloudy day, with light wind, in January. These numbers from renewables will only go up, every year we will have more wind turbines, and more solar panels. Yes : our infrastructure is aging., how on earth have got into a position where we're only producing 3GW of Nuclear Power?! - this is hugely embarrassing. We're great at building things, but terrible at getting started. We have great engineers, and terrible government. By the time Hinkley comes on line it will only *replace* the old stations that need to be shut down. in summary : no, don't worry, the lights won't go out. but we have been dragging our feet (to put it mildly) on the road to doing things better.