Sheffield Congestion Charge From Feb 27th 2023

[ads36]

6 minutes ago, Chekhov said:

Cobblers. Sheffield used to be far easier to get into and around (and park, obviously).

quite possibly.

 

But 50 years later, and the increased number of vehicles on the road would make it completely unworkable.

 

even The Romans used traffic-filtering-bollards. Things change, but none of this is new.

 

Edited November 29, 2023 by ads36

[Chekhov]

7 minutes ago, ads36 said:

quite possibly.

 

But 50 years later, and the increased number of vehicles on the road would make it completely unworkable.

 

even The Romans used traffic-filtering-bollards. Things change, but none of this is new.

 

The number of miles driven on British roads has hardly changed for years and years :

 

[Bargepole23]

12 minutes ago, Chekhov said:

Cobblers. Sheffield used to be far easier to get into and around (and park, obviously).

I never, ever, have any difficulty parking in the city centre. There are loads of car parks and on-street parking spaces. Of course, you will need to pay for them, as to be expected.

[Bargepole23]

3 minutes ago, Chekhov said:

The number of miles driven on British roads has hardly changed for years and years :

 

The number of car miles in Sheffield was 1167 million in 1994, and was 1396 million in 2019. A 20% increase, a significant increase for a network, where the response to increases won't be linear. 

[Planner1]

47 minutes ago, Chekhov said:

That is being "economical with the actualité" isn't it ?

For years the council has been making it harder and harder to drive into and around the city centre, and even harder and more expensive to park there.

I rarely if ever drive into the centre now, and many others take the same view, hence loads of empty city centre shops and thriving out of town shopping centres.....

No, it isn’t.

 

Everywhere that needs  vehicular access has got it.

 

Through traffic is being eased out of the centre onto the inner ring road.

 

Same as pretty much every other town and city of any size is doing in this country and many others.

 

People everywhere are realising how detrimental unrestricted traffic access is.

 

City centres aren’t just shopping centres. There are many other businesses, organisations, facilities and residents in them. To be successful and attractive, they need to be safe and pleasant places to be in. You don’t get that by allowing through traffic to thunder through them. Does Meadowhall have traffic running down the Mall?

 

In case you hadn’t noticed, shopping habits have changed enormously and many people buy online. That’s why you see many empty shops. It’s the same issue everywhere.

[ads36]

 

1 hour ago, Chekhov said:

The number of miles driven on British roads has hardly changed for years and years :

are we looking at the same graph?

 

a 10% increase in car-miles

 

and a 60% increase in van-miles

(let's be honest, *many* of those vans will be personal vehicles - serving as big family cars. More or less every family i know has 2 vehicles, one of which is basically a van : a pickup, a transit, a transporter, etc.)

 

Why does the graph only go back 20 years? - if we want to look at a time when the city centre was largely un-restricted to car access, we've got to go back to when Fargate was open, the late 60's.

Edited November 29, 2023 by ads36

[Planner1]

1 hour ago, Chekhov said:

And that's before we mention the new zone which at the moment doesn't apply to cars, but it will at some point, it's almost certain. There is no way they've gone to all that trouble for a relatively small number of vehicles which would have been off the road in 5 or 10 years anyway

Amazing how many people on here appear to think they know the future.

 

Do you actually understand the reason CAZ’s have been imposed?

 

The government have imposed them because the courts have forced them to after environmental activists took the government to court and won. The government had to act expeditiously to rectify illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide or face swinging fines. The government clearly did not want to impose restrictions and appear to have felt that the problem would have gone away over time as the vehicle fleet was renewed with less polluting vehicles.

[mike1961]

On 27/11/2023 at 11:37, AndrewC said:

Some of the conversations above make the same mistake people have been making about this scheme since it's inception; grossly overestimating the number of vehicles that would actually be subject to the charge.

 

It was already the case long before the scheme started that huge numbers of vehicles used by trades people already had modern engine types which were exempt from the charges. That number increases as fleets are naturally updated and replaced over time. Many people impacted took up Council schemes to fund new exempt vehicles, and most of those who did not simply adapted their businesses to manage the cost of the charges.

 

For every trades person who wouldn't accept a job in the city centre because of the charge there will be at least 1 other who is exempt and wouldn't have any issue accepting a job within the zone.

 

From it's inception as an idea to the day it commenced, public forums such as this one, The Star comment sections, etc. were full of nightmarish predictions of traffic/rat-running chaos and industry collapse as any business which used petrol would disappear overnight, not to mention it being the 'final nail in the coffin' for the city centre.

 

Whilst I don't deny an impact was felt by some businesses, for the vast majority absolutely none of those catastrophic impacts came to pass, and this thread - for example - went very, very quiet.

Where's the grant money for upgrading vehicles ,I applied months ago and apart from an acknowledgement email from SCC nothing further just total silence.

 

I've subsequently chased my application and all I got was an email saying "were very busy".

 

Total incompetence 

[hackey lad]

On 29/11/2023 at 15:41, Planner1 said:

Amazing how many people on here appear to think they know the future.

 

Do you actually understand the reason CAZ’s have been imposed?

 

The government have imposed them because the courts have forced them to after environmental activists took the government to court and won. The government had to act expeditiously to rectify illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide or face swinging fines. The government clearly did not want to impose restrictions and appear to have felt that the problem would have gone away over time as the vehicle fleet was renewed with less polluting vehicles.

I thought some councils  don’t have them 

[Planner1]

2 hours ago, hackey lad said:

I thought some councils  don’t have them 

The government have only imposed them in places where air quality doesn’t meet legal requirements.