Sheffield In Bloom

My journey to work is brightened every morning by the fantastic landscaping around parts of the new section of Inner Relief Road. I don't know who is responsible for the planting, but they have done a great job, as soon as one thing starts to fade, something new appears. I quite enjoy stopping at the traffic lights now, because it gives me a chance to look at the view!

I thought I'd stop off on the way home and take a few pictures to share with you:

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Originally published here on my main blog http://three-legged-cat.blogspot.com/
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A Day in the North

The Three Legged Cat presents a sing-along-a-blog-post.
To be sung to the tune of A Day in the Life
With apologies to Messrs Lennon and McCartney...

I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky place that got a grant
And though the news was rather strange
Well, I just had to laugh
I saw the paragraph
“This is good news for your car
You will notice that the roads have changed”
A crowd of people stood and stared
They'd seen her face before
No-one was really sure if she was a local councillor

I read The Star today, oh boy
Three years* just to pick a contractor
But all the holes are here today
You only have to look
Having had the shock
Of being shaken all around.

Woke up, got out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up, I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
On my bike in seconds flat
Fell over in a hole and wrecked the bike
Bent all the spokes and I went into a scream
Oooooowwwww

I read the news today, oh boy
Few thousand holes in Sheffield, South Yorkshire
And though the holes are rather small**
They’ll have to fill them all
That needs as much Tarmac as it takes to fill the City Hall
You couldn’t make it up


*Three years???!!! How can choosing a contractor take 3 years? I searched tonight's edition of the local paper for a correction, but it seems that 3 is the magic number...

**Small by Mexican standards anyway

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Originally published here on my main blog http://three-legged-cat.blogspot.com/
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A Sigh of Relief?

Sheffield’s bid to become the grid-lock capital of the UK might just be thwarted today when the long awaited new section of the inner relief road opens.

According to the local council’s web site, the new section of road is just 1.5km long, but has cost a staggering £56 million, the local paper quotes an even higher cost of £65 million.

A glance at the map does suggest that it will bypass many of the worst traffic bottlenecks, so journey times should be reduced. The scheme has been designed around the needs of all the city’s road users, so it incorporates bus lanes as well as diverting large numbers of cars that would have previously created congestion on the city centre’s roads. If all goes to plan, this should be good news for everyone.

Of course this is Sheffield, a city with a council which appears to believe that simply placing inconveniences in the way of motorists will cause them all to abandon their cars and leap enthusiastically onto buses and trams. Consequently the new relief road also incorporates features such as traffic lights to help to help to manage traffic flow/slow those pesky car drivers down.

Public transport is of course a great option for many journeys, but until the system offers both improved journey times and buses, trams and trains that actually connect, without passengers having to trek from one part of town to another, it’s unlikely that many motorists will be persuaded to leave their cars at home.

In the short term, many are predicting a great deal of confusion since many local people seem very unclear about how to find their way around the new system, so there is plenty of potential for motorists to become annoyed and get lost in the days to come, particularly for those who rely on their SAT-NAV systems to find their way around.

In fact the city council has produced a really excellent map that makes this all very clear. Unfortunately for some reason instead of publicising this map’s existence, they have tucked it away on their web site. Which is a shame; because I’m sure that most people would have found this map very helpful today.

The big question is whether the new section of relief road will deliver any real relief to the city’s travellers, or will it just provide us all with interesting new places to view traffic jams?



Links:

Sheffield City Council This news page includes a link to download a map of the new road system.
The Star Sheffield's daily paper

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Originally published here on my main blog http://three-legged-cat.blogspot.com/
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