£10m transport improvement scheme on busy Sheffield road progresses

While the actual starting date for the A61 Chesterfield Road bus improvement scheme is still years away – the plan for the construction to kick off in 2027 – work on what the residents want to see happen in the area has already been ongoing in the background.

Sheffield Council’s £10m scheme is slowly progressing as issues around Chesterfield Road, including congestion and parking, have been escalating, according to some residents and businesses.

One of the first steps to get the scheme moving forward is to conduct a public consultation.

This happened between September 9 and October 25 last year, and we’ve got the results now.

According to a leaflet, 44 per cent of residents were in favour of the scheme with 56 per cent saying they were against it.

This resulted in a number of changes – proposals being added, changed or dropped.

Despite this, Cllr Ben Miskell, the chair of the transport, regeneration and climate policy committee, was positive and he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that lots of people have responded – including almost a thousand people providing feedback online – and he described the drop-in events “really-really good”.

Cllr Miskell said: “There were quite a lot of concerns that were raised with us and consultations, actually, are meaningful exercises.

“It’s an opportunity for us to listen to our residents and businesses, then respond and update some of the transport schemes that we’ve got.”

Cllr Miskell said the plan was to improve the reliability and punctuality of buses in the area.

He added one of the main reasons for such bad traffic congestion on A61 is people can’t be certain whether a bus would turn up so they have no other choice but to drive.

So how would Sheffield Council want to tackle this problem?

Cllr Miskell said: “To improve congestion we’ve got to give people a genuine choice on how they travel around our city, at the moment many people have no other option other than to own two, three, even four cars in their households.”

The A61 Chesterfield Road bus improvements scheme has a number of proposals, including:

Improving the bus stops throughout the whole of the route (with live updates)

Adding bus priority signals at existing traffic lights (this would prioritise buses)

Widening lanes at the Meadowhead Roundabout

Improving pedestrian crossings

There is one particular question Cllr Miskell highlighted where the consultation resulted in changing plans.

The council proposed to ban right turns from Chesterfield Road to the side roads but residents “overwhelmingly” objected to this so the ban won’t go ahead.

Cllr Rob Bannister, a ward councillor in Graves Park, said the idea behind the consultation was that residents can share their thoughts on traffic and even parking issues, which has “forced” the council to amend some plans.

“They spoke, we listened”, he added.

Cllr Bannister said one of the solutions for the area’s problems should be “less cars” – but for that the city needs a better public transport system.

He said: “We certainly can’t build wider roads, there is no roof for that around here.

“The obvious answer is to get people out of cars.

“More cycling, more walking, more buses.”