£4.8m revamp for busy Sheffield road gets mixed reaction from businesses

Sheffield Council claims the major overhaul around the junction with Broadfield Road in Heeley, including the creation of an additional lane, will shave around two minutes from journey times.

Some businesses along that stretch have welcomed the plans but others have questioned whether the benefits merit the cost and the disruption it will cause.

Paul Burke, owner of Manhattan Motorcyles, said: "I think it's probably a good idea - anything to keep it flowing a bit better. It gets so busy at peak times."

But Kim Thorpe, who owns The Kitchen Gallery, said: "I don't think it will make much difference. For me they could leave it exactly as it is and avoid causing more disruption, because this will just shove the bottleneck further along."

Lisa Dobson, owner of the Aquavet canine hydrotherapy business, said: "I think this will have to be done once the extra lane is open further up or you will have a bottleneck there, but it's too early to say what the impact will be."

Don Walker, who owns Broadfield Mowers, said: "This will cause a lot of disturbance and given the amount they're spending and what they're trying to achieve in terms of shaving a couple of minutes off journey times I don't think it represents value for money.

"They already wasted £4 million in Woodseats and they had to admit that made no improvement to bus times or traffic flow."

Stuart Herrington, media manager at The Chapel Jewellers, said: "Whether or not this extra lane will help, I don't know.

"The question is how will the delays while they're doing the work compare with the two minutes they're saying it will save once it's complete."

Mick Leng, store manager at Machine Mart, said: "The work at the Broadfield Road junction makes perfect sense because that's a big bottleneck.

"If the extra lane on London Road is a reversible one, like you have further down, I think that would work too, but not if you have two lanes going into town and only one coming out."

Sam Oates, who owns the pet store Xotics, said: "My worry is this will be like what happened in Woodseats, which ended up costing £1 million for every second it saved.

"I think they'd be better off spending money putting traffic lights in outside Halfords because it's impossible for cars to get out there when it's busy, and there are often crashes."

Widening the road would require the council to buy some land on the western side of the road, where Select Cars is one of the businesses that could be affected.

Jason English, director at the car lot, said: "If it's going to affect our business because they need some of our land I'm not going to be very happy.

"All the arterial roads to the south of the city centre are too old, and they can't cope with the amount of traffic on them."

The council says informal discussions have already been held with affected land owners but a formal approach needs to be made.