South Of Sheffield Traffic Madness

[Guest]

On 31/12/2019 at 13:47, Bargepole23 said:

The mess around Kelham Island is caused entirely by unnecessary car journeys. I can't see any progress being made either, because people are too lazy to either use public transport, cycle or walk.

 

Not everyone can, and not every journey, but most could some of the time.

Care to back that up with figures and facts instead of what you just happen to think? You have no idea what any of those people are doing. It's a major artery in/out of Sheffield. It's like saying people using the M1 are all entirely unnecessary car journeys.

 

I mix it up depending on what I'm doing. The quickest I can do it is by car, 25 mins door to door if I leave at 6:30am. Next is train; 20 mins walk + 15 mins train + 20 mins walk, followed by bus with the same walk but a 35 min bus journey.

Edited January 4, 2020 by Guest

[slh73 32]

1 hour ago, dave_the_m said:

My morning commute takes 15 minutes door to door by car, or about 45 mins by buses, or 55 mins by foot. If buses were free, I'd probably still choose to drive.

Same here. 20 mins motorbike, half an hour car, hour and a half on the bus & train (assuming they turn up/run on time). I wouldnt use them if they were free

[Guest]

On 31/12/2019 at 13:45, Planner1 said:

It shows they are trying to improve matters. Heard the one about needing to crack eggs to get an omelette? Yeah, there might be a few problems while the works are ongoing. It is rather difficult to dig the place up while keeping traffic running as normal you know.

 

Hardly a fair comparison when you are driving in a congested city centre on roads that are undergoing construction works and trying to compare it to driving in town half the size and on high capacity roads that are have  relatively light traffic. 

 

Personally, I go round the inner relief road  a fair bit and I haven't seen major issues with traffic. It was always busy at peak times and some lanes were prone to clog up due to turning traffic but that's why they re improving it.

Have you ever visited Doncaster city centre? I do every Friday morning and late afternoon. It has worse traffic than Sheffield at rush hour and on smaller roads.

 

Do you know if there's an end date to these roadworks? Currently some of the problems are due to them having closed off the lanes that are for traffic filtering onto other roads and them not having reopened them yet tbh.

[Longcol 600]

1 hour ago, probedb said:

Have you ever visited Doncaster city centre? I do every Friday morning and late afternoon. It has worse traffic than Sheffield at rush hour and on smaller roads.

 

Do you know if there's an end date to these roadworks? Currently some of the problems are due to them having closed off the lanes that are for traffic filtering onto other roads and them not having reopened them yet tbh.

No such animal - Donny's a town.

 

If any of the three main roundabouts gets snarled up the place grinds to a halt - it's been happening pretty regularly for at least the last 20 years.

[Bargepole23 337]

1 hour ago, probedb said:

Care to back that up with figures and facts instead of what you just happen to think? You have no idea what any of those people are doing. It's a major artery in/out of Sheffield. It's like saying people using the M1 are all entirely unnecessary car journeys.

 

I mix it up depending on what I'm doing. The quickest I can do it is by car, 25 mins door to door if I leave at 6:30am. Next is train; 20 mins walk + 15 mins train + 20 mins walk, followed by bus with the same walk but a 35 min bus journey.

If you read a bit harder you will see that I haven't said all those car journeys are unnecessary, as you imply.

[Crissie 18]

7 hours ago, Planner1 said:

Public transport expensive? So is motoring. Motoring organisations put the cost of running a car at circa £3.5k a year. You could buy around three annual public transport passes for South Yorkshire for that: https://www.travelsouthyorkshire.com/SYConnectplusAnnual/ So, a small family could use public transport for a similar cost to running a car.

True, but I bet most of them would still like to own a car for other journeys that aren't commuting, shopping or school runs, eg holidays, visiting out-of-town relatives / friends, etc.  
So the reality will be that they still have the cost of ownership for a car, even when using public transport for some / most journeys.
I'm considering buying an e-bike for my daily commute. It might save me £30-40 a month in fuel but I'll still keep my car for weekend stuff that couldn't easily be done by public transport, so I can't justify getting the bike on cost-saving alone, I have to consider the health benefits, congestion reduction, reduced environmental impact.

[Planner1 437]

11 hours ago, e5c4p3 said:

Perhaps that’s because a bus or train that cannot be relied upon to turn up is not a viable option for some irrespective of the whether it’s free or not.

I use trains pretty much every day and I don't know of any services that can' be relied on to that extent. Mine is cancelled occasionally but there's another in 10 mins so no problem really. They are normally punctual within a couple of mins.

 

No-one claims that public transport is for everyone and if whether a particular service turns up on time or at all is critical to your journey, maybe it's not for you.

8 hours ago, Crissie said:

True, but I bet most of them would still like to own a car for other journeys that aren't commuting, shopping or school runs, eg holidays, visiting out-of-town relatives / friends, etc.  
So the reality will be that they still have the cost of ownership for a car, even when using public transport for some / most journeys.
 

A lot of people who use public transport do have a car, but make different transport choices depending on the journey.

[DerbyTup 10]

On 24/12/2019 at 09:12, Planner1 said:

The planners know what is needed, but politicians take the decisions.

 

If we are going to meet the targets for carbon reduction and cleaner air, there are going to have to be some radical changes in how we all travel. 

 

Make it easier for people to travel by public transport then!

 

 I think your following comment is quite scary tbh:

 

Quote

The only way most will get out of their cars is if they are made to (eg access restrictions ) or are priced off the road ( congestion charge, very high parking charges etc).

If that's how you are thinking, as a planner, then you are part of the problem I'm afraid.  The facts are that many of us would prefer to ditch the car and go about by public transport.  But it isn't reliable, it isn't "joined-up" and it's expensive.  

 

I've spent a few years living overseas, most recently in Switzerland.  I didn't even have a car over there.  I didn't need one.  The public transport systems are excellent.  The trains, trams, buses are  reliable and they run on time.  They are joined up - so  you can get straight off a train onto a tram, or straight off a tram onto a bus.  And it's not prohibitively expensive to travel by public transport.  They also have lots of cycle lanes everywhere so it encourages people to cycle to work. 

 

You have at least provided us with a fascinating insight into Council policy.  It is clearly based on "penalties" rather than "incentives".  Do you consider, for a moment, that's where you may be fundamentally going wrong?

[Bargepole23 337]

1 hour ago, DerbyTup said:

Make it easier for people to travel by public transport then!

 

 I think your following comment is quite scary tbh:

 

If that's how you are thinking, as a planner, then you are part of the problem I'm afraid.  The facts are that many of us would prefer to ditch the car and go about by public transport.  But it isn't reliable, it isn't "joined-up" and it's expensive.  

 

I've spent a few years living overseas, most recently in Switzerland.  I didn't even have a car over there.  I didn't need one.  The public transport systems are excellent.  The trains, trams, buses are  reliable and they run on time.  They are joined up - so  you can get straight off a train onto a tram, or straight off a tram onto a bus.  And it's not prohibitively expensive to travel by public transport.  They also have lots of cycle lanes everywhere so it encourages people to cycle to work. 

 

You have at least provided us with a fascinating insight into Council policy.  It is clearly based on "penalties" rather than "incentives".  Do you consider, for a moment, that's where you may be fundamentally going wrong?

Hard to compare public transport costs between countries, but I can get a bus ticket to get into town from Ecclesall for £1.80. A single ticket in Switzerland, about £2. I could catch a train from Sheffield to Leeds, about an hour, for about a tenner, a train from Bern to Zurich, about an hour, about twenty quid. I appreciate that reliability and quality of transport are not comparable.

 

The council have very little money after years of central government cuts, and as you know there would be uproar if council tax was raised by any significant amount to provide funding for transport schemes. We want great infrastructure but few want to pay for it.

Edited January 5, 2020 by Bargepole23

[max 13]

9 hours ago, DerbyTup said:

Do you consider, for a moment, that's where you may be fundamentally going wrong?

Planner1 has constantly reminded people that he/she does not work for the council nor is he/she responsible for any decisions that they have made or may make in the future. In fact, every post he/she makes has that exact disclaimer as his/her signature.

 

This is not an us and them situation, we all live in this City and perhaps, rather than being judgemental, people could make polite suggestions as to the way forward.

[Justin Smith 10]

On ‎04‎/‎01‎/‎2020 at 15:55, Planner1 said:

The studies I saw said the majority of car drivers said they wouldn't use public transport if it were free. Whether that would be the reality is a matter for conjecture. You'd need to reduce the number of cars on the road by maybe a quarter to a third if you wanted to achieve the same traffic conditions we see during the school summer holidays.

 

Also, evidence suggests that any increases in bus use tend to come from those who already travel by "sustainable" modes, like walking, cycling, light rail, not from car drivers. The only public transport which takes mode share away from car use is the tram.

 

Another issue would be where to find the money from. Most of the money given by government to local authorities for highways / transport projects is "capital" money and can only be used for building things / providing assets. It can't be used for "revenue" purposes, which is what would be needed for subsidising operational costs of bus fleets. So, you can't just use the money which would otherwise be spent on transport capital projects, because it's not eligible spend.

 

Public transport expensive? So is motoring. Motoring organisations put the cost of running a car at circa £3.5k a year. You could buy around three annual public transport passes for South Yorkshire for that: https://www.travelsouthyorkshire.com/SYConnectplusAnnual/ So, a small family could use public transport for a similar cost to running a car.

I remain unconvinced that if public transport was really free that substantial numbers of car drivers would fail to use it.

 

My own research indicates that just a 10 to 20% drop in car use would result in a significant reduction in traffic jams.

 

Your statistics on the cost of car use fail to distinguish between the fixed and opportunity cost of car ownership. Almost all car drivers feel the need to own a car, the only question is how often they use it. The problem is that most of the costs of a car are fixed costs, insurance, servicing, depreciation etc. OK so the last two are affected to a certain extent by mileage, but not by a massive extent. Thus, once one has a car it's the additional cost of a particular journey which is what really counts. As a very rough guide maybe the cost of the fuel plus say 50% for additional depreciation and wear and tear. Using that methodology car use is actually quite cheap compared to bus / tram / train journeys, particularly when there's a few people making the trip. This obviously excludes the cost (and indeed the availability) of parking, and it is this which is often the deciding factor in whether the car is used. However, just making parking more expensive and/or reducing its availability is a very dangerous game to play as many car owners simply change their behaviour and, for example, shop in out of town centres with free parking. We see this all around us, city / town centre shops closing yet out of town centres are packed. 

Edited January 5, 2020 by Justin Smith

[WarPig 78]

Public transport is of no use to me when finishing work at 3:30am and trying to get home.