AndrewC

There was a news story last year I think it was of a village in N Yorkshire which had a school that was going to close because there were so few new youngsters coming through. It was documented that the village had turned down numerous housing developments over the preceding 10-20 years and that the housing stock - and therefore most of the residents - had not changed in much in the same period, ergo, very few young families moving into the area...

The irony here now of course being that the more you lower the density being offered, it becomes more difficult to build viable business cases for bus routes, cycle infrastructure, local shops, new schools/nurseries, etc. etc., meaning a higher percentage of the new residents all dependant on driving cars to existing facilities in nearby suburbs - making the traffic worse.

As a taxpayer, I've helped bail out countless private companies over the last couple of decades from banks, to steelworks, to retail staff pensions etc, etc. I've also seen countless services and industries run in to the ground in the name of private profit. I'm not saying public ownership is perfect, or even on par with private, but it's a fallacy that private endeavours don't have plenty of inefficiencies in the way they're run, and they often end up costing the tax payer more in the long-run either way.

I don't think that building was listed? Neither that block or it's sibling over the road (Midcity House - currently being demolished) have ever been listed to my knowledge? Which would mean that would have been a flat-out lie from the Council if given as the reason for refusal, but an easily refuted lie, if McDonalds appealed that at the time? Do you remember what year this was, planning apps should be easy enough to find (though it's trickier if it's older than 20 years)? I remember it was open as McDonalds when I came to Sheffield in 2003, but it was Stone The Crows for a few years before demolition, not sure when it changed...

How do you manage to give that much of a toss, either way?

Anyone interested in more visuals and construction/progress pics, regular updates are made over on the Sheffield section of Skyscrapercity: HOTC2 | Radisson Blu Hotel & Gaumont Building | 8fl | U/C | SkyscraperCity Forum

Fair enough but just seems odd to me for the OP to present it as if it's just been announced. It shouldn't be too long until it opens, but there's no confirmed opening date as far as I'm aware and it's something that has been mentioned and discussed on loads of other SF threads. Seems a bit 'inbetween news' for a thread?

*4 years. March 2020, YorkshireLive: Sheffield Radisson Blu hotel plans take shape as more details emerge - YorkshireLive (examinerlive.co.uk) The buildings on Pinstone Street are looking fantastic. Despite what people like to bleat about on here, we do need more and better hotels in our city centre, and this is a great addition. It will also come with a couple of new restaurant units facing Pinstone Street to.

This is incredibly old news. Radisson have been confirmed tenants for this spot for about 4-5 years.

That isn't the reason it wouldn't happen though. It's money/funding, and a bit of politics - they're the real reasons most tram extensions don't get off the ground. If you can get the funding, it's unlikely the impact on a minority of residents & businesses would stop an infrastructure scheme, if there are far more beneficiaries. Do you think things like the completion of the inner ring-road from Shalesmoor to Wicker/Parkway was done without huge disruption, and with no 'victims' in terms of businesses which had to relocate or close altogether after the road ploughed through the area? Of course there were, but most people would argue that it was worth it in terms of completing an important piece of transport infrastructure for the city, though opinions quite rightly differ about whether we should be building more roads or tramlines, but that's another story.

Ask people who suffered most with any major infrastructure project and they are very likely to give you quite negative feedback, yes. I agree and I've already said on here and many times before on other similar threads that the reality is this all wishful thinking and extensions in Sheffield are highly unlikely, certainly on-street routes. But what hacks me off is the utter negativity of people who say 'you couldn't possibly get a tram through there etc.' when the reality is that IF you have the funding (yes, a big 'if') and the political will, most engineering obstacles can be overcome. People like RollingJ who just stop at the first sign of disruption are just not the kind of positive voice that ever sees anything progress in the city/country. When you look at some of the actions they've taken in Manchester, Birmingham, and other cities to accommodate the tram in their city centres and suburbs - and with very little regret from their residents & businesses - it just goes to show what can be achieved. But then, that's Sheffield all over, hey?

If I may be so bold, you've voiced a lot of very confident analysis on this thread on what the tram is and isn't capable of for someone who 'doesn't know' one of it's most obvious and well known tight corners. Anyway, the OP suggested their new line would accommodate an extended purple route, which would suggest they only meant their new line would link up with the High Street on the eastern side of the junction with Fargate, i.e. coming from Castle Square and turning left in to Fargate, and vice-versa. No suggestion of a turn that links it with the Cathedral station & beyond - a turn which would indeed probably be too tight for the tram to make. Another reason Arundel Gate would be a better option - Castle Square to Arundel Gate (from either direction) would be a 90 degree angle and more space to fit in the turn (the turning circle of the more recent class tram - used on the tram-train to Parkgate - is 22m according to wikipedia.

Only the OP has suggested Fargate/Moor itself - everyone else, myself included has said that was unlikely to work for most of the reasons you & Planner1 have stated. Yes - but we did do it, right? We did still push ahead with the tram despite all the difficulties you've listed, and cities are still building and expanding systems today, all because the long-term benefits - if the systems are managed correctly - outweigh everything else, right?

It's mostly nimbyism and a lack of political will. People shout, 'no! the disruption!', yeah well, most things cause short-term pain. It can be minimised and managed. People look at engineering barriers (how do you get it down this road, how will it span that river, there's no space here etc.) - again, it usually just takes imagination, experienced people and political will to actually come up with the solutions; the cost of them is the one real limitation.

I don't know mate? Adapt? Cope? Not whinge about every last detail you can possibly find to moan about?

Maybe not a cash cow then but it would make a reasonable business case. Again - only theoretical for all the reasons already mentioned - but if you could click your fingers and overnight run a line from the top of Banner Cross to the High Street via Ecclesall Road, The Moor, Heart of the City 1&2 etc, it would see a hug amount of custom.

But mainly cost. Most of the other things you mention are really only issues if you allow them to be issues, and are surmountable.

You get shouted down just for not towing the Sheffield Forum party-line that everything that happens in Sheffield must be bad and awful or down to Council corruption/incompetence (even things that have nothing to do with the Council)! I've worked in healthcare for 20 years, never come close to working for the Council, but I've often been 'accused' on here of working for them, usually just because I've had the audacity of providing context to something that doesn't completely shine a bad light on them.

For all the talk of routes to the suburbs, I always think this seems like a really useful central extension to build. Not only providing a functional link between Moorfoot and the existing tram lines/High Street, but also it would be a statement of confidence in the city, linking in with the new Heart of the City areas too. Unfortunately, function and PR don't really make the business case for it. If you want the funding you have to show how it will make money, and that almost certainly requires it to link in with residential/suburban areas. Me? I'd do that by driving it down London Road or Ecclesall Road, but we all know the push-back from that means it's something politicians and residents will just never accept. If you could click your fingers and put a tram line in down Ecclesall Road overnight, no disruption, it would be a no-brainer - and a cash-cow.

Not an unfair point that I nearly made myself but; Generally speaking a lot of the on-street trams in Europe tend to be the slightly smaller models of tram compared to Sheffield's. Not always, but quite often, and it does make a bit of a difference. I think we're really talking about your primary, busy pedestrian streets, not just any city centre street, however traffic-calmed and pedestrian-focused it may be. Even in Europe it's unusual to run them on absolute pedestrian areas - they are more often than not run on streets that still have car access, so whilst they might be 'traffic-calmed' side streets, there is still a distinction between pedestrian & vehicle space. As I said above I think it's a case of 'why bother?' if you can get the tram close by without conflicting with pedestrians? My favourite tram vs pedestrian experience in Europe is Ponte Luis I in Porto where trams the size of supertrams run across an otherwise pedestrianised bridge barely 10 metres wide!

There's already several businesses located in the block between Countess St, Clough Rd, John St, Bramall Lane, and in fact I think this building in question was previously a trampoline park?! or some such thing. It's not that big an issue. If a petrol station can manage with limited car access on matchdays then a craft market can handle it.

I'd run a tram down Arundel Gate, then across Furnival Gate on down Charter Square (or just straight down Eyre Street). Either way, if you want to run a tram from High Street to the south-west of the city centre, there are ample on-street options that would save you from bothering to run it directly down Fargate/Moor, which - as others have said above - would be an unnecessary conflict between hefty trams and your busiest pedestrian areas.

You asked that question on the 6th February and got an answer the next day:

There are some quite large sections of completed paving up by the Town Hall end of Fargate that give more than a good enough indication of how the paving is likely to come out. You can paint 1sq ft of your living room wall in a new colour and decide it looks nice - you don't necessarily need to wait until it's all finished. It's been explained by others on here that these works are much, much more than some new paving - even if that's ultimately all we'll ever really see of it. Huge changes to underground utilities (to facilitate more residential premises on upper floors than there are currently), underground bin stores, planters & flower beds that will probably have the same SuDS technology as other grey-to-green schemes have had (like on Bridge Street, West Bar etc)., new bollards. And all whilst having to manage the site so Fargate can stay open to minimise disruption. It's odd, most naysayers on this forum will tell you town is dead and no one uses Fargate any more, and yet many of the same people will try and tell you all these works are causing disruption? Fargate certainly hasn't seen much love & investment since I first came to Sheffield, around 2003. I appreciate what you say about the cobbles put down in the 1990s, but - as above - there's more to it than just new paving.

Lizzie literally said, 'they have started to put down paving'. Why would you think that would mean it would no longer be a building site? They're still in the process of doing a lot of the underground utility works on most of the street.