City Road Corridor consultation

Today I've been to a consultation about the City Road corridor.You can read more here
There are some great ideas around, and it will be interesting to see how many of them come to fruition. The numbers at the meeting were however disappointing when you consider the size of the area in question, which is equivalent to a small town.

One of the most popular ideas is to plant lots of fruit trees along the corridor. I think this will be great, as long as the Council can find the money in the budget to maintain them and protect them from vandals. They will be an excellent source of free food for the community! Many of our cities trees are in a very poor state of health, and we need a massive planting scheme to start to replace the ones that will soon have to be felled.

On traffic many people at the consultation thought that it was no good trying to slow traffic on City Road. I disagree. There have been many accidents on City Road and it is a residential street. I would like to see a blanket 20mph speed limit for the whole area. But if this is unpopular at least the side streets should all be 20mph. I again raised the issue of the traffic lights at the junction of Bernard Street and Duke Street, by the Trades and Labour Club/New Inn. These lights really should include a pedestrian crossing.Pedestrians should not have to risk life and limb every time they cross the road.

The major problem that needs addressing is the lack of useful shops. We have plenty of fast food outlets and takeaways, but there is nowhere to buy an apple or a potato! Hopefully investment in the area may attract new shopkeepers.

New walking routes to connect the various green spaces are to be encouraged, and it will be good to have a new entrance to Deep Pits park, next to the old Travellers pub, which I gather is to become a shop with apartments.

Cosmetic features like signposting, floodlighting etc will improve the area but wont bring regeneration on there own. The key will be to attracting sustainable local businesses that can provide for the needs of the local people.

Bernard Street/Duke Street traffic lights

Further to my earlier posting I took a few pictures of the junction at rush hour this morning. True, there weren't many pedestrians- but is that surprising when crossing here is such a nightmare? It is enough to persuade even the most conscientious climate change campaigner to resort to using a car.

Here a van mounts the pavement to try to turn left up Duke Street.




The top picture shows how busy the junction has become. It has been made more difficult to cross because of the bus gate at the bottom of Duke Street. As traffic can't continue down the hill to town, everything is channelled along Bernard Street.

Here a pedestrian dashes across the road between traffic, as there is never a gap in the traffic going along Bernard Street.

Maybe we need to start a local petition to get a pelican at this crossing. What do you think? Maybe with more Greens in the Town Hall we could secure more finance for pelican crossings.

When the junction is right next to the Trades and Labour Club, you would think the Labour Party would be sympathetic on this one!

Pedestrian Crossings

I have been investigating the Councils priorities for new Pelican crossings in our area. There is a city wide scheme where any proposal is listed and scores points according to various criteria. Here are the possible places in our area along with the current score.

Granville Road (by All Saints School) 10
Manor Oaks Road/Wybourn Primary School 9
Prince of Wales Road/Castlebeck Avenue 9
Manor Lane between Manor Park Road and Seaton Crescent 8
Bernard Road (by Megacentre) 7
Bernard Street at Cricket Inn Road signals 7
Bernard Street (between Cricket Inn Road and Duke Street 7
Norfolk Park Road/All Saints School 7
City Road near Stafford Lane 6
Duke Street at Bernard Street junction 6
Duke Street south of Manor Oaks Road junction 6
Bernard Street at Duke Street signals 6
Manor Lane/Warley Road 6
Duke Street nr Red Lion pub 6
Stafford Road/Fitzwalter Road 6
City Road / Manor Lane 6
City Road between Park Grange Road and Wulfric Road 5
Cricket Inn Road/Whites Lane 5
Shrewsbury Road/Granville Street 5

Around the city there are 6 places that score 10 like Granville Road, so these are the top priorities for the Council. The Granville Road crossing is scheduled to be built in 2010-11. It seems unlikely that crossing possibilities scoring less than 9 will be built unless there is a big transfer of funds from road building to road safety, which is what I would like to see. There are 244 places around the city where people have requested the Council install a crossing and 19 of those are in our area.

Sheffield currently has a 'hung' council with no party in overall control. This has enabled the Green Party to get funding for 10 extra pedestrian crossings into the 2008/9 budget.

If you feel strongly about where we should have new crossings, please reply to this article and send an email to John.Bann@sheffield.gov.uk who is head of Transport at the City Council.

One of the important criteria is the number of accidents, so it is very important that all accidents get reported.

My pet hate of a junction at the moment is Bernard Street/Duke Street, where there are traffic lights for cars, but no pelican crossing for the pedestrians. This has become a very dangerous crossing in recent times. I am surprised there haven't been more accidents there.

The junction between Stafford Road and Fitzwalter Road is on the list, but I don't think this needs a crossing- it would be better to have some sort of mini roundabout, and measures to slow down cars on Fitzwalter Road . At present, if motorists obeyed the highway code they would never be able to turn out of Glencoe Road onto Fitzwalter Road, because if you stop at the Give Way line you can't see on coming traffic coming up the hill along Fitzwalter Road. But it is clear we need some accidents here before the Council will be prepared to do anything about it.

So, over to you- how can we make our roads safer? Where would you put a crossing if you could decide where to put it?