Sheff Council - Shalesmoor Road Layout

[forgeman 18]

I don't think Planner1 takes into consideration the time it takes to walk to the bus route, waiting for a bus, travel on said bus and then walk to a destination. If I were to use this method of transport it would be an all day job.

[BoroB 10]

1 minute ago, Planner1 said:

That article was about a particular improvement which was needed at one location. They don’t make any general statement about what a highway improvement scheme must or must not include.

 

That improvement that you refer to, to widen a road to improve travel times and ease air pollution per the council,  is on the same stretch of road  that has now been subject to a road narrowing scheme.

 

As the report from 2019, a whole year ago states:  “One of the worst sections is between Sheffield Parkway and Penistone Road. This section needs more road capacity and improvements to the operation and layout of the signal junctions.

 

Without putting words into your mouth , you seem to be saying that a highway improvement scheme should lead to cars idling and long tailbacks that were identified as an issue requiring a £4.6m spend only last year ?

1 minute ago, forgeman said:

I don't think Planner1 takes into consideration the time it takes to walk to the bus route, waiting for a bus, travel on said bus and then walk to a destination. If I were to use this method of transport it would be an all day job.

There's a difference between what some would see as  'an ideal world' and the reality that we live in . 

[Planner1 428]

4 minutes ago, BoroB said:

 

Without putting words into your mouth , you seem to be saying that a highway improvement scheme should lead to cars idling and long tailbacks that were identified as an issue requiring a £4.6m spend only last year ?

 

Which is exactly what you are (unsuccessfully) trying to do.

 

Not every improvement to the highway network is for motorised traffic and sometimes, to make things better for some modes of travel, you have to make things worse for others.

[Brooker11 10]

17 hours ago, ECCOnoob said:

Mine certainly wouldn't.

 

Not when I have multiple appointments to attend in a day and various equipment and confidential files to be transporting about.

 

Nor I imagine will many people be happily hopping on bikes if they work as any sort skilled tradesman or contractor or carer or remote medical professional or supplier or sales rep or indeed anyone who has to carry more than a small rucksack.  

 

We are not all privileged to live a short distance away from our workplaces with ample shower and changing facilities nor does everyone have the freedom to amble along at a leisurely pace to get to where we need to go.  Some of us have family responsibilities to juggle with the logistics of a full time job and that often involves rushing round to transport children and relatives various places.

 

Not everyone has the luxury of a fully integrated, properly timetabled, reasonably priced,  perfectly reliable transport system on their doorsteps. 

 

For all of the council's grand ambitions cars are here to stay.  We are not London.  We don't have a fantastic tube system which whisks people to where they need to go every few minutes.  We don't have a wonderful reliable integrated subsidised bus system which covers all of the city at all points in the day.  We don't have a majority of the population living within the greater city limits with a quick and easy walk to all major points.

 

An obvious point is that we are surrounded by massive hills which is a bit of a hurdle for a start for many.

 

Time for SCC to come back into the real world.  Tell you what let's start small, all those SCC branded cars that the support workers use and all those gas guzzling contractor white vans.  let's ban them and give them a bus pass or maybe a bike eh?   What about the mayoral car - let's get that swapped for a nice new pair of trainers to walk it's only fair right?  

  

The old phrase is lead by example so let's see it.  

I think we've clashed on matters like this in the past but this post is 100% bang on, this is an absolutely ludicrous decision and will make an already very busy and regularly congested road many times worse, lunacy.

 

My job also involves multiple appointments and non car use is impossible.

[Planner1 428]

10 minutes ago, forgeman said:

I don't think Planner1 takes into consideration the time it takes to walk to the bus route, waiting for a bus, travel on said bus and then walk to a destination. If I were to use this method of transport it would be an all day job.

And, in the same vein, many drivers don’t take account of the time it takes them to find a parking space ( or the cost of it) and walk to their final destination. 
 

The measures we are discussing here are to help walking and cycling, not motorised transport modes.

[forgeman 18]

2 minutes ago, Planner1 said:

And, in the same vein, many drivers don’t take account of the time it takes them to find a parking space ( or the cost of it) and walk to their final destination. 
 

The measures we are discussing here are to help walking and cycling, not motorised transport modes.

This cost of parking is the very reason I do not venture into the city centre at all.

[Parkside 0]

1 hour ago, Blue Day said:

Ok. I get ya. 
 

Keep ploughing on with the same message. It’s good to have another side to the argument even tho it seems not many agree. 
 

Walk or cycle eh? In Britain. For up to 3 miles each way. 
 

Hmmmmm

Three mile on a bike about 10 mins , to walk 45mins max , no problem there .

 

[ECCOnoob 1,017]

1 hour ago, Planner1 said:

Drivers stuck in a queue have the opportunity to think whether they could have walked or cycled quicker.

 

According to this article: https://sheffieldcityregion.org.uk/sheffield-city-region-announces-plans-for-1000km-of-walking-and-cycling-routes/ 40% of car commuting trips are 1km or less and 64% are under 5km. If a goodly proportion of those drivers chose to walk or cycle, there would be fewer problems for everyone.

 

 

Do you actually read some of the posts on this thread?   It is not simply about the distance.  

 

Some people cannot feasibly walk or cycle as an alternative.  They have disabilities that prevent them from doing so.  They have time constraints that prevent them from doing.  They have loads to carry which prevent them from doing so.  They have passengers to carry which prevent them from doing so.

 

The solution is not simply to bully car drivers off the road.  All these horse crap environmental concerns are used as an excuse of justifying it.   A bit of foresight and proper town planning when they had the opportunity could have allowed for a a free flowing well designed road system which keeps traffic on the move and away from the centralised core areas where people are walking around and away from all the hazard.  

 

A bit of foresight and competence could have designed and a reliable off-road mass transit system which actually covered where people lived and had the advantage of being outside of any potential traffic delays.  But oh no we got the tram nowhere  which follows multiple existing roads and half the time gets just as jammed up as any car.

 

Then we can go to the crux of the issue here.   The problem is what powers cars not the acutal use of one.  

 

Now, perhaps a progressive competent council would think well outside the box of simply looking for ways to inconvenience drivers and more about encouraging use of alternative power.  Maybe a progressive council wouldn't be so blinded by the anti car agenda and think about encouraging the development and installation of electric vehicle recharging beyond the couple we have now.  Maybe they will come up with other incentives to encourage people to switch over to hybrids or Ev. 

 

Of course I dont expect any such revolutionary ideas from the knuckleheads running ours.

[Planner1 428]

2 minutes ago, forgeman said:

This cost of parking is the very reason I do not venture into the city centre at all.

Fair enough, it’s all about choices. Do you take into account the fuel costs of going somewhere else?

 

The parking charges in Sheffield are in fact fairly modest when you look at other cities not far away. There is still quite a bit of free parking in areas surrounding the city centre, but I’d expect that to change.

[Parkside 0]

46 minutes ago, Planner1 said:

How many times are emergency services stuck behind such a vehicle?

 

If the emergency services have a real problem with something, they will talk to the council about it. Most times, if, because of changes, they now find it slower to go that way, they will use an alternative route.

 

The emergency services are very pragmatic and accept that they will sometimes get caught in traffic. It is not practical to have unobstructed access for emergency vehicles at all times on all routes. They fully understand this and plan for it.

The emergency services will not be as frequent due to cyclists and pedestrians not being run over on a regular basis on Penistone Road .

[forgeman 18]

3 minutes ago, Planner1 said:

Fair enough, it’s all about choices. Do you take into account the fuel costs of going somewhere else?

 

The parking charges in Sheffield are in fact fairly modest when you look at other cities not far away. There is still quite a bit of free parking in areas surrounding the city centre, but I’d expect that to change.

I do not live in another city not far away, I live in Sheffield.

[ECCOnoob 1,017]

1 hour ago, Planner1 said:

Which bits of the main highway network around the city have no queuing problems at peak times? 
 

What ends to happen is different drivers use different alternative routes and the traffic tends to percolate away across the network. Yes, there’s more traffic on the alternatives. What do you expect?

 

Like I’ve said, drivers won’t get out of their cars unless car use is made slower, more difficult and/or more costly.

 

If the vast majority of car commuting trips are under 5km, you can’t argue that many of those drivers could switch mode if they wanted to. 

It's not peak times though.

 

The alarming thing about this is there a significant number of people who are still working from home or not even working at all.   Most shops and hospitality businesses have literally only just reopened and already these ridiculous changes are causing problems.

 

What the hell are they going to be like if we applied the regular working day rush hour traffic.  I don't understand how anyone can see this is nothing but an absolute incompetent failure, which let's be completely frank is serving absolutely sod all benefit.

 

I see all this talk about the "increases" in people cycling and walking but where are they.....  why arent these new cycle lanes filled with people joyfully using them.  At least in central London you can look at the cycle highway and see how busy they get.  That ain't happening up here no matter how much the council and they're cronies try to persuade us.