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Rush-Hour Only Bus Gate - 28 February 2009
The bus gate at Hillsborough corner, Sheffield, is set to have enforcement hours cut to peak times only for a trial period. The gates, which restrict private vehicles, will only operate between 7am and 11am and between 3pm and 7pm Mondays to Saturdays compared with 7am to 7pm currently. The changes could cost £9,000, plus £5,000 to £10,000 for a major campaign to advertise them.
The move will inevitably lengthen public transport journey times through the district, which have fallen by up to 51 % for trams and 22.5% for buses since the present camera enforcement scheme began. This has led to a 19 % increase in passengers, equivalent to 2,500 more passengers each day.
Incredibly the Lib-Dem controlled City Council’s report on the issue says that by relaxing restrictions there will be an increase in traffic congestion and could lead to more accidents on Langsett Road and Middlewood Road. At the same time the City Council is saying it shares a concern of the Chamber of Commerce which reports that congestion is holding up the prosperity of the city and a senior Liberal Councillor Ian Auckland declares that “Our key priority is tackling congestion”!!
Both Langsett and Middlewood Roads are public transport corridors served by trams and buses. These services will therefore be severely affected. It is proposed that the changes would be monitored in three, six and 12 months, to assess the impact on public transport journey times, shopping trends and accident levels.
Sheffield City Council introduced the restrictions several years ago in an attempt to ease congestion at the crossroads for buses and trams and more recently started to enforce the rules with cameras to record offenders. Earlier studies showed that most of the through traffic entering the Hillsborough Shopping Centre actually did just that, it passed through. Only a minority were shoppers in the Centre.
A petition against relaxing the Hillsborough busgate operating hours
If you wish to offer your support to this petition, please see Stagecoach Supertram’s web site.
Tram 116 has now had its refresh completed. It is the twenty fifth and final tram to be refreshed. Work will shortly be starting on our secondary refresh programme which will comprise of a complete undercarriage overhaul..
Stagecoach Supertram has received excellent feedback from all sections of the tram and light rail world. This is based on the design, innovation, speed, quality and value for money of our refresh program.
Fleet availability was been placed under a lot of pressure during the refresh with only 23 trams out of a pool of 24 in service during that time. No other system in the UK can come close to these availability figures. This is made possible because of the close working relationship between the maintenance and operations departments.
Stagecoach Supertram Maintenance limited are the only UK light rail company to attempt and successfully carry out a refresh onsite, effecting the majority of the work using their own staff. None of the above would have been possible, without good people and we are proud of all staff at Supertram in particular the maintenance and project team.
SYPTA (now SYITA) submitted a bid to the Yorkshire & Humber Regional Transport Board, in October 2008, for support in the procurement of 4 additional tram vehicles, at a cost of GBP14.3m, for the current system. This bid has now been backed by the Board and will be presented to the DfT in the near future. If this is successful it would bring the total number of vehicles on the network to 28 and frequencies on the Yellow route, Middlewood to Meadowhall could be improved to every 7 ˝ minute intervals from 10 minute at present and from 10 minute to 8 minute on the Blue route Malin Bridge to Halfway. A new operation from Gleadless Townend to Hillsborough with a number of short workings, could also be introduced.
Since the system opened in 1993 the number of passengers has risen steadily with 14.8m passenger journeys made in 2007-08, up from 14m the previous year.
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