The council commissioned a report into an active travel neighbourhood in Nether Edge. Then they ignored its findings

Good afternoon members — and welcome to Thursday’s Tribune. Picture this: you’re a data scientist who has spent a very long time compiling a report for the city council. The work is arduous but valuable. The report you’ve been writing — which clocks in at over 1,500 pages long — crunches the numbers to evaluate the Nether Edge low traffic neighbourhood, and the results seem clear. The stats suggest that the experiment, which has taken place over the past 16 months, is a success. Shortly after, you’re on Twitter and discover, to your confusion, that the council — the same body who has commissioned the report — has voted to effectively remove the LTN. So what exactly are these councillors basing their decision on? Dan Hayes headed down to Nether Edge to untangle the mystery.

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Your Tribune briefing

🌹 The seven Labour councillors who were suspended from the party last month have resigned their memberships and will now sit as independents. A statement released by the seven (a group that includes former leader Terry Fox) said they were resigning due to “differences of opinion and approach” with other members of the party, adding that they did so with “a heavy heart”. Labour leader Tom Hunt said their decision was “disappointing”.

🚆 Prime Minister Rishi Sunak used his speech at the Conservative Party Conference to announce a raft of improvements to rail services for our region — at the same time as saying the rest of HS2 will be scrapped. Under the plans, the Midland Main Line will be electrified and the Don Valley Line from Sheffield to Stocksbridge will be reopened to passengers. There would also be quicker trains to Manchester and more frequent services to Leeds.

⚽ This excellent piece in Now Then about the travails of Sheffield Wednesday empathises with the club’s fans — but could also offer some hope for the future. After last year’s promotion, the departure of former manager Darren Moore and a terrible start to this season have brought the club back down to earth with a bang. However, rather than relying on a wealthy but capricious owner in Dejphon Chansiri, could Wednesday fans run the club themselves?

Things to do

🍔 Peddler Market, the street food market in Neepsend, this weekend celebrates its 9th birthday. They promise a “two-day celebration of the crème de la crème of street food,” alongside a selection of craft beers, DJs and independent stalls. The party starts at 5pm on Friday and 2pm on Saturday and continues until 11pm.

🤘 On Saturday night, Sheffield-based techno outfit, The Black Dog, are holding a special launch event for their new album My Brutal Life, which will include a live-set. The Black Dog are often lauded as pioneers of UK techno and were one of Warp Records’ most successful acts in the early 1990s. The show will take place at the University of Sheffield’s Drama Studio — buy tickets here.

🚲 On Sunday afternoon, the UK’s last Drum & Bass bike ride of 2023 will take place in Sheffield. The ride starts at 2pm at Tudor Square in the city centre and is set to benefit from some fantastic weather. More than 500 people have suggested they’ll attend on Facebook and you can find out more information here.

The council commissioned a report into an active travel neighbourhood in Nether Edge. Then they ignored its findings

There's a Groundhog Day quality about the school run: the same parents, the same kids, the same conversations ("How was school?" — her daughter, pulling a face, stretching out the vowel like toffee: "Yeah, okaaaaay"). If it wasn't for the sky, you'd swear it was the same day on loop. A steady stream of harassed-looking parents are coursing down Archer Lane in Nether Edge to pick up their children from one of the two local primary schools.

But in contrast to the deja vu the scene evokes, things are about to change radically here. The school run, conducted by foot, is made possible by red and white barriers at the top of the road, three planters and two concrete blocks (installed at the beginning of the trial, when drivers angry they weren’t able to use the road any more kept shoving the planters out of the way). The modal filter on Archer Lane, which is currently part of the Nether Edge Active Travel Neighbourhood, won’t be here for much longer. 

Last month, councillors on Sheffield City Council’s transport, regeneration and climate policy committee voted to remove the modal filter after just 16 months in operation. In less than three weeks’ time, motor traffic will once again be able to travel up and down the tree-lined road, allowing drivers to cut through the residential area on their way between Abbeydale and Ecclesall roads. In theory, the Nether Edge Active Travel Neighbourhood was made permanent at the same committee meeting. But since it’s been reduced to just two new pedestrian crossings on Osbourne Road and Psalter Lane, it’s difficult to see the councillors’ decision as anything other than completely gutting a scheme that had already been drastically pared back from what was originally intended.

So how did we get here? Perhaps anticipating the polarisation that such a topic prompts, Sheffield City Council tried to provide some comprehensive data on the LTN. The baffling aspect here is that the data would seem to provide a strong argument in favour of retaining the current set-up. The report, which runs to over 1,500 pages and includes a seemingly endless stream of statistics, diagrams of junctions and data visualisations, concluded that the Nether Edge Active Travel Neighbourhood has been of benefit to the area. It said the number of people walking and cycling in the area had increased by 16% while traffic on “potentially impacted routes” had also increased but by a much smaller amount than feedback has suggested (around a 5% increase). It also said most journey times hadn’t been significantly lengthened (seconds as opposed to minutes).

When councillors were asked if they had any questions about the report at last month’s transport, regeneration and climate policy committee, none were forthcoming. In the end Labour and Lib Dem councillors joined forces to scrap the Archer Lane filter, outvoting the Greens. One Lib Dem councillor — Beauchief and Greenhill’s Richard Shaw — abstained. 

The key issue on people’s minds on the roads around Archer Lane over the last few weeks has been why councillors decided to disregard the data their own council officers had spent months collating. The Lib Dem group spokesperson on the committee, Fulwood councillor Andrew Sangar, tells me that while he understands that most of the people living very close to the Archer Lane closure would have preferred it to stay, the feelings from people across the wider area were very much against it.

“I was responding to the wider views from people across Nether Edge and Ecclesall who were saying that they were finding the closure of Archer Lane particularly difficult,” he tells me. “What I was responding to was my postbag and the postbag of my colleagues around the city. The closure of Archer Lane was the one bit out of all the closures in the three schemes that people were saying you must reverse. That was a strong message.”

In the aftermath of last month’s vote, the Greens accused Labour and the Lib Dems of a stitch-up: joining forces to gut the scheme of its key element.