How do Sheffield road planners get it so wrong?

[Cyclone]

You can have it both ways of course, they're called give way junctions. Or of course the roundabout.

 

You could be correct, perhaps for some reason they made Halifax Road a 40, and they made Netherthorpe Road a 40, but the section between, that at the time went through only industrial areas, they actively decided to make that a 30 zone, a wide, dual carriageway access to the city from the north 30 zone.

I'm not sure which would be worse, forgetting to apply for the 40 zone, or deliberately making it a 30 for no good reason.

[the fonz]

You can have it both ways of course, they're called give way junctions. Or of course the roundabout.

 

You could be correct, perhaps for some reason they made Halifax Road a 40, and they made Netherthorpe Road a 40, but the section between, that at the time went through only industrial areas, they actively decided to make that a 30 zone, a wide, dual carriageway access to the city from the north 30 zone.

I'm not sure which would be worse, forgetting to apply for the 40 zone, or deliberately making it a 30 for no good reason.

 

You are someone who usually asks for proof/evidence and bemoans anecdotal accounts but that's all your posts seem to contain at the moment.

 

You are of course entitled to you opinion no matter how wrong it might be.

[Annie Bynnol]

I was referring to Leppings lane.

 

The council do nothing to make walking, cycling or any public transport an alternative. The fact that alternatives exist doesn't mean you can credit the council with encouraging their use.

The carrot and the stick is a common metaphor for attempts to change behaviour, it's not overly emotive, and by punish I mean the deliberate policy of making car use more difficult, without any policy of actually making alternatives more attractive (the carrot that is missing).

I cycle regularly, in fact I rarely take the car to work, but the council do nothing to make cycling easier. The infrastructure for cycling is poor and poorly thought out. Apart from making my car journey more difficult and my parking more expensive, the council do nothing to encourage me to use the tram or to cycle or to walk.

 

---------- Post added 21-09-2017 at 08:19 ----------

 

 

Plenty of large projects have been completed, take Derek Dooley Way and it's 27 sets of traffic lights for example. Which are timed to guarantee you can't drive down it without stopping 8 times between the parkway and Penistone Road.

Take Penistone Road, they 'forgot' to apply for the 40 limit, they're still forgetting now 20 years later, but they remembered to put up a speed camera to enforce the 30 limit which only exists because they 'forgot'...

Take the A57 from Rivelin Valley to the Ladybower. They paid for a report into safety to determine whether they should reduce the speed limit.

The report said emphatically NO. There was no case to reduce the speed limit to 50.

So they did it anyway.

 

 

The road system as designed in the 60s and 70s made it very much more difficult to use walking and cycling as an alternative to cars for short commutes for example into town. As in in many cities this just promoted more traffic through rather than around city centres and physical and emotional barriers in the form of fencing, bridges, tunnels and dead land around these roads to cycling and walking.

 

In the face of opposition, the re-engineering of these routes to remove them as barriers, speed limits to make roads safer, protected crossings in the city centre to make them suitable for all users is beginning to see a move away from car dependency in every city.

 

A lack of basic understanding of the interactions of how people and things move is clearly seen in threads like this. A classic example is Penistone Road where many users think that because it is a dual carriageway it therefore must be some form of expressway into town for them. For many it was an obstacle to be crossed. Its new design is to accommodate both.

 

Encouraging walking and cycling requires the removal of obstacles and promoting routes which despite vocal objections and lack of money it is happening here just as it is other cities and towns.

[the fonz]

Councils are anti-car, if you are pro car you are pro congestion and pro pollution. The road network cannot cope with demand, it is just a series of bottlenecks and any improvements just move the problem. The anti-car stance is only ever going to get worse with the new air quality regulations.

 

Car ownership and the right to travel when and where you want is an aspiration and seen as a right, no amount of carrot will get people out of their cars so its all stick stick stick.

 

If you actually think about it, the council do a lot to encourage walking and cycling and the use of public transport, is it enough no, is there funding for large scale interventions available, probably not anymore thanks the recent break down in the devo deal.

[Cyclone]

You are someone who usually asks for proof/evidence and bemoans anecdotal accounts but that's all your posts seem to contain at the moment.

 

You are of course entitled to you opinion no matter how wrong it might be.

 

You're right in that I haven't provided any proof. But you're wrong if you think that makes it an opinion, I've clearly made statements that I belief to be factual.

 

The post you've quoted in fact contains something clearly factual, you can use give way or roundabout junctions in place of traffic lights, and then something that can only be an opinion, the reflection on which is worse, deliberately making a road a 30 zone or forgetting to apply for the 40 order.

 

---------- Post added 21-09-2017 at 09:14 ----------

 

The road system as designed in the 60s and 70s made it very much more difficult to use walking and cycling as an alternative to cars for short commutes for example into town. As in in many cities this just promoted more traffic through rather than around city centres and physical and emotional barriers in the form of fencing, bridges, tunnels and dead land around these roads to cycling and walking.

I read a fascinating article about Stevenage the other day, let me see if I can find it for you.

It's about the great cycling infrastructure that was built into the city and how it simply isn't used.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/sep/19/britains-1960s-cycling-revolution-flopped-stevenage

 

In the face of opposition, the re-engineering of these routes to remove them as barriers, speed limits to make roads safer, protected crossings in the city centre to make them suitable for all users is beginning to see a move away from car dependency in every city.

I'm not sure it is though.

It's seeing life made more difficult for motorists, but they don't stop using their cars, they continue, just with more difficulty.

 

A lack of basic understanding of the interactions of how people and things move is clearly seen in threads like this. A classic example is Penistone Road where many users think that because it is a dual carriageway it therefore must be some form of expressway into town for them. For many it was an obstacle to be crossed. Its new design is to accommodate both.

I suspect that most people using don't want to go into town at all, I generally don't. I want to go to somewhere beyond town, but I am hampered by the lack of an outer ring road, or indeed any alternative route, and then further hampered by the council trying to make it difficult for me to go into town, where I don't even want to go!

Who is it a barrier to though? Most of Penistone Rd doesn't run through residential areas. You rarely see pedestrians near it, why would they be, walking from Upperthorpe to Neepsend perhaps? Or Hillsborough to Shirecliffe?

 

Encouraging walking and cycling requires the removal of obstacles and promoting routes which despite vocal objections and lack of money it is happening here just as it is other cities and towns.

 

I don't see much evidence of it happening. I see evidence of the stick, motoring made ever made more difficult, but no evidence of the carrot.

 

---------- Post added 21-09-2017 at 09:15 ----------

 

 

If you actually think about it, the council do a lot to encourage walking and cycling and the use of public transport,

 

For example?

 

---------- Post added 21-09-2017 at 09:16 ----------

 

Councils are anti-car, if you are pro car you are pro congestion and pro pollution.

 

Deliberately causing congestion increases, well, obviously congestion and also pollution.

Free flowing traffic is better for the environment and everyone involved.

[the fonz]

I belief to be factual.

 

Exactly, without any proof your belief isn't enough to actually make them factual.

 

The examples include, funding the tram, funding bus gates, bus priority measures, ensuring new employers provide facilities for cyclists as part of the planning process, removing obstacles for pedestrians, such as underpasses in include just a few.

 

We all want a monorail but no one wants to pay for it.

 

Freeflowing traffic in a city is just unrealistic, even the idea itself if flawed, free flowing for who, the main road or the side roads, do you suggest we remove pedestrian crossing facilities? It only ever occurs on long straight roads not in cities, all the free flow does is increase congestion at the next bottleneck.

 

Maybe you would like to see roads everywhere like in America, a place well know for its good air quality and free flowing traffic.

Edited September 21, 2017 by the fonz

[Cyclone]

Exactly, without any proof your belief isn't enough to actually make them factual.

 

Errr, yes. But since nobody has asked for proof...

 

---------- Post added 21-09-2017 at 09:25 ----------

 

Councils are anti-car,

Opinion? You've provided no proof.

The road network cannot cope with demand, it is just a series of bottlenecks and any improvements just move the problem.

Hmm, again.

The anti-car stance is only ever going to get worse with the new air quality regulations.

I hesitate to ask...

 

Car ownership and the right to travel when and where you want is an aspiration and seen as a right, no amount of carrot will get people out of their cars so its all stick stick stick.

Well, is that an opinion?

 

If you actually think about it, the council do a lot to encourage walking and cycling and the use of public transport, i

 

I have actually asked for the proof for this one.

 

See, it's quite easy to post a whole bunch of stuff without providing the evidence. I do it, you do it. If you want the proof of something, just ask, rather than telling me that I'm just posting opinions.

 

---------- Post added 21-09-2017 at 09:29 ----------

 

 

The examples include, funding the tram, funding bus gates, bus priority measures, ensuring new employers provide facilities for cyclists as part of the planning process, removing obstacles for pedestrians, such as underpasses in include just a few.

 

We all want a monorail but no one wants to pay for it.

 

Funding the tram? We're going back 20 years then?

Following a parliamentary act in 1985 authorising the scheme, the Supertram line was built by the South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive (SYPTE) at a cost of £240 million,[3] and opened in stages in 1994/95. It was operated by South Yorkshire Supertram Limited,[4] a wholly owned subsidiary company of SYPTE. In December 1997, the company was sold to Stagecoach for £1.15 million.[5] Stagecoach gained the concession to maintain and operate the Supertram trams until 2024.[6] Patronage has grown from 7.8 million passenger journeys in 1996/97, to 15.0 million in 2011/12.[7] In 2016/17 it carried 12.6 million passengers.[1]

 

Did SCC fund it?

 

The first predictions of passenger numbers were well off the mark and there was concern the £240m it took to build the system was looking like poor value for money.

People in South Yorkshire were paying for a network that looked like it was not going anywhere. Who should bear the cost became a big issue.

In 1998, a deal was done with the then Labour government so that costs were reduced, but people living in South Yorkshire were paying 5p a week each for Supertram. And they will still be paying for it for another 10 years.

It appears to have been funded as a county wide thing...

 

Funding bus gates is an example of stick and carrot combined at best, bus gates impede motorists and waste space for a minority of vehicles. The same applies for any bus priority measure. By giving the bus priority you are removing priority from other traffic. SCC have no choice about requiring planning applications to include sustainable transport.

Removing underpasses as an example of making it better for pedestrians? Surely the opposite. Instead of keeping traffic and pedestrians separate and both moving, they put in a new surface crossing and everybody gets inconvenienced...

How about cycling, perhaps the excellent new cycling infrastructure of pointless cycle lanes that go nowhere, are filled with debris and cede priority at every side road?

Edited September 21, 2017 by Cyclone

[niallzi]

As the fourth (fifth or sixth practically) biggest city in the country we have two 'A' roads, an inner ring road and half an outer ring road.

 

its our topography, hills make it so difficult to have a road infrastructure like Leeds or Manchester.

[haddy]

Meadowhead roundabout.... rebuilt a couple of years ago, and again now.

It is a way of keeping otherwise unemployable people in work.

 

This isn't being fully paid for by the council but the developers of the retail park which is why it is being redone due to increased traffic

[Planner1]

You can have it both ways of course, they're called give way junctions. Or of course the roundabout.

 

You could be correct, perhaps for some reason they made Halifax Road a 40, and they made Netherthorpe Road a 40, but the section between, that at the time went through only industrial areas, they actively decided to make that a 30 zone, a wide, dual carriageway access to the city from the north 30 zone.

I'm not sure which would be worse, forgetting to apply for the 40 zone, or deliberately making it a 30 for no good reason.

 

Councils have to build to design standards which are advised by Government. There are criteria for where a give way junction, stop line, a roundabout or traffic signals are appropriate. Signals are provided because they are the appropriate measure in that location.

 

Do you seriously think that significant streams (not just the odd vehicle) of traffic can carry out right turns across busy dual carriageway roads safely and efficiently on give ways?

 

Roundabouts are ok where flows are pretty even. When they are tidal, as on a ring road, they are not so good and you often see them having traffic signals to break up flows so other approaches can actually get onto the roundabout. Roundabouts are less space efficient than signalised junctions. Roundabouts aren't good at providing adequate pedestrian crossing facilities where pedestrians want to cross.

 

Regarding your complaints about replacing underpasses with surface level crossings, ask a few pedestrians which they prefer, particularly in the hours of darkness. No good having an underpass which people won't use for a good part of the time and where they endanger themselves by jumping barriers to get across the road at surface level.

 

And lastly, they don't choose speed limits for "no good reason". There is always a good reason at the time it is designed. For any new road, a primary consideration is what the speed limit is going to be. It affects the way you design the road layout and it's infrastructure (lighting, barriers, signals etc), so you need to know at the outset.

 

---------- Post added 21-09-2017 at 13:10 ----------

 

The council do nothing to make walking, cycling or any public transport an alternative. The fact that alternatives exist doesn't mean you can credit the council with encouraging their use.

This, in common with a lot of the other stuff you are spouting is utter nonsense.

 

 

SCC's 2017/18 capital programme features the following spend on projects:

Accessibility improvements (Walking) - £1.5m

Cycling - £3.9m

Public Transport Improvements - £4.6m

 

That's just in one year.

 

To suggest they do nothing is plainly ridiculous.