Controversial ‘red lines’ plan for Sheffield roads is deferred as changes agreed to improve bus services

Businesses on London, Abbeydale and Ecclesall Roads have been campaigning hard to stop 12-hour bus lanes becoming part of a plan to create bus priority corridors in the south-west of the city. If the red routes enforced by red lines on the roads had gone ahead, it would have halted all on-street parking, stopping, deliveries and loading between 7am and 7pm.

Instead, a meeting of Sheffield City Council’s transport regeneration and climate policy committee (July 19) agreed to go ahead with junction improvements and traffic management changes at or near six junctions along the roads and camera enforcement on existing sections of the bus lanes, without extending their operating hours.

Tom Finnegan-Smith, the council’s head of strategic transport, sustainability and infrastructure, said that the council had received seven petitions against the 12-hour bus lanes, which was “one of the initial ideas” proposed.

He added: “Neither 12-hour bus lanes or red route restrictions are being recommended to the committee at this stage.” He said that camera enforcement of the existing bus lanes would target illegal parking that restricts the flow of buses.

In response to a question by Coun Ian Auckland, he said: “We do hear what local businesses are saying. We have heard what they are saying in the consultation – their concerns are predominantly on the implications on parking and loading.

Support

“The scheme can be implemented on corridors where parking is retained during the day.”

Coun Andrew Sangar said: “I am pleased and relieved we have got to this point. I would like to see that is where we had got earlier.” He praised Ecclesall ward councillor and LibDem colleague Barbara Masters for her work in speaking to local businesses and residents.

He called the current plan “a comprehensive piece of work that we can all get behind and support”.

“We need Abbeydale and London Road to be a success, we need Ecclesall Road to be a success as bus routes but also as through routes for people to move through.

“We need to think about how we get engagement right first time. We are clearly going to have to make some decisions where people don’t like it. We need to take more people with us in the choices we are making.”

Coun Sangar said he felt that the former cooperative executive that led the council previously had rushed into the project, creating problems.

Coun Craig Gamble-Pugh said: “We were really hampered here by the circumstances of the consultation at the very beginning of this scheme and quite a lot of the schemes we have seen coming through this committee over the past 18 months.” He added: “It was Covid, we accept that.”

Innovative

“But there was another factor that was different then. It was the pre- committee system where it was the bad old days where we had individual councillors holding a cabinet or an executive coop role, where individual councillors in those days were able to hold that executive role and push through their own agendas, regardless to the balance of the views of other elected councillors and of the public.

“When you try and do something innovative and do something new for the first time, you get one chance to get it right and take people with you. What we have seen in the lifespan of this committee time and time again is people being in an absolute panic because people have misunderstood or we haven’t co-designed these schemes effectively with people.

“People are having responses that are really based around anxiety and concerns, some of which are very real. I am very glad that the current chair and your predecessors have taken the time out to being to the committee the opportunity for us to have a pause on some of the more controversial elements of this scheme which people came to our committee and said would cause real, significant problems.

“I hope that everybody where would agree that whoever it was that held the coop exec brief when these schemes were initially consulted on really missed a trick and it’s really landed us in it. Time after time after time we are struggling to bring people with us on these ideas, it’s essential that we do.

“We are losing a lot of time and, as we’ve discussed in this meeting, we haven’t got that time because we’re in a climate emergency.”

Certainty

Earlier in the meeting Save Our Streets campaign member and Banner Cross postmaster Nasar Raoof told councillors that businesses still believe red lines “need to come off the table”.

He stressed the need by traders for certainty in decision-making and the impact of any loss of street parking on vulnerable people. Mr Raoof said there also needs to be a business impact assessment before any future move back towards red routes that would stop on-street parking, deliveries or loading.

Committee chair, Coun Ben Miskell responded: “We need to bring everyone along on the journey,” adding he agreed about the need for proper assessment before any further interventions are considered.

He also stressed the need for “more reliable and consistent bus services”.

Mr Raoof issued a statement afterwards, thanking local media and ward councillors for their “amazing support” and thanked previous committee chair Coun Mazher Iqbal and Coun Miskell for coming and listening to businesses’ concerns.

He added: “We have managed today as collective businesses together from both Ecclesall Road and Abbeydale Road/London Road to stop the introduction of red lines across our streets.

“We as businesses have proved throughout this whole saga that by standing in unity together with our residents and all services that are provided along both these routes can achieve fantastic results. Let’s now use this platform to build on.”

Read this: Church flats conversion plan rejected

Read this: More set to be hit by rising debt crisis