Monorail Sheffield: Plans for driverless shuttle system in the city are revived after 50 years

** Did you spot our April Fools joke today? That’s right, there are no plans for a monorail in Sheffield, not that we know of at least. As well as the date, and the corny pun that it would be paid for with ‘levelling up’ funding, the names of the two people quoted might have given the game away. Flora Opil is an anagram of ‘April Fool’, while the letters in Justin Midgkid can be rearranged to spell ‘I’m Just Kidding’. **

Proposals to build the driverless shuttle system running above the city’s streets never quite got off the ground back in the 1970s, but council bosses believe the time is now right to resurrect them. They are confident it will help solve Sheffield’s transport woes, including congestion, difficulties recruiting bus drivers and the cost of maintaining the city’s tram network.

Flora Opil, Sheffield Council’s executive member for innovation, said: “If the Government is serious about levelling up, this is the type of ambitious scheme we believe it should be supporting – one which will truly elevate the city’s prospects. New technology means a monorail for Sheffield is now more affordable, more environmentally sustainable and more beneficial than ever before, and we are determined to make this happen.”

Plans for the monorail, or Minitram, system generated huge excitement when they went on display at Cole Brothers department store in 1974. But the scheme – involving small cars each carrying around 15 passengers and running along 2.5km of tracks with nine stations, from Sheffield Midland railway station to the bottom of The Moor, via Fargate – was eventually abandoned the following year.

Now town planners think it could be the key to achieving 15-minute neighbourhoods – where everyone can access essential facilities like schools, shops and offices within a quarter of an hour of their home, without having to drive – within Sheffield. They also believe a new monorail network could solve the problems facing public transport along Ecclesall Road and Abbeydale Road, where proposals to speed up bus journeys by restricting parking appear to have hit a dead end following opposition from many small businesses.

But critics believe reviving the monorail proposals is just an attempt to distract from the difficulties facing the council, which is still reeling from the findings of the long-awaited Sheffield tree inquiry and public criticism over the cost of the short-lived Container Park attraction at the top of Fargate.

Environmental campaigner Justin Midgkid said: “This is just more pie in the sky thinking, which shows the council has a one-track mind when it comes to wasting public money on vanity projects which are doomed to fail.”