FAQs

Connecting Sheffield: City Centre is an ambitious project to improve the city centre environment by making it a more attractive place to live, work, and spend time. Alongside projects including Heart of the City, it will be part of the transformation and regeneration of Sheffield city centre into a vibrant, dynamic commercial heart of the City and City Region.

The city centre project will help to transform the opportunities to walk, wheel, cycle and travel by bus across the city centre creating people-friendly streets and new public spaces. It will:

• Create direct, safer and more attractive walking, wheeling and cycling routes through the city centre.
• Enable more people to walk, wheel or cycle, creating a safer, more vibrant and less polluted environment for city living.
• Connect to other active travel routes serving areas across the city, such as Nether Edge, Kelham Island, Neepsend and along the Lower Don Valley to Attercliffe and Darnall and Magna, Tinsley and Meadowhall. 
• Introduce new pedestrianised areas and create open, attractive places and spaces in the city centre where people want to stop, relax and spend time.
• Bring the Outdoor City into the city, by creating greener streets with high-quality planting and greenery, integrated with sustainable urban drainage to help the city become more resilient to climate change.
• Reduce bus journey times across the city centre.
• Encourage increased bus patronage and reduce reliance on private cars.

Connecting Sheffield: City Centre is crucial to delivering a high-quality city centre experience. 

For our city centre to thrive in an age of internet shopping, we need to make it a great place to live as well as visit. We need to make our city centre more pleasant, and attractive for residents and visitors alike. Building a bigger residential population is important to sustain a vibrant retail and leisure offer, which then benefits everyone.  

We will transform the city centre, bringing the Outdoor City into the city by creating green public spaces, and making key streets more attractive. We'll echo the landscaping and paving which we've completed at Cambridge Street and Charles Street in the Heart of the City. 

Creating a more attractive environment is crucial to attracting new employers to the city, increasing inward investment in the city centre to create new jobs and opportunities for people in Sheffield.

By creating new segregated cycle routes, we will deliver easier, safer access by cycle right into the heart of the city centre, making cycling easier overall. – Once in the city centre, we will make it easier for people to get around on foot, by wheelchair and by cycle by creating new pedestrianised routes, a better environment for walking, wheeling and developing a series of connected cycling routes with ample space to travel safely, away from motorised vehicles. Traffic volumes will be reduced in the civic heart of the city to make our key spaces safer and more pleasant, but we will maintain access to key car parks and provide additional on-street disabled parking spaces on Union Street. 

Bus journeys are already quicker with more direct routes and we’re improving bus stops and waiting areas too. We’re also prioritising bus routes with bus gates. The focus on more high-quality spaces and greener streets, with additional planting, greenery and improved landscaping, creates the conditions for people to relax, enjoy themselves and spend time, whilst also making the city centre a more vibrant and attractive as a place to visit. Creating a more attractive environment is crucial to increasing inward investment in the city centre, which attracts new jobs and opportunities for everyone in Sheffield.

If we can maximise the number of people who walk or cycle around the city and city centre, we can also play a part in addressing the impact of transport on the climate and reducing pollution.

Sheffield City Centre is changing. 

More people are living and working in the city centre and, with ambitions for more residential development in the coming years, this means we need to develop the city’s transport infrastructure and public spaces to meet our needs.

Cities that have a strong city centre, with an attractive environment, large residential population and high numbers of businesses, are best placed to succeed and there are already a number of significant projects underway across the city centre. 

Projects like Heart of the City and the work on The Moor, around the Town Hall and Peace Gardens, at Fitzalan Square and by our two universities, are helping to strengthen the city’s offer. We're attracting independent shops, office spaces, homes for permanent residents, hotels and high-quality public spaces, as well as leisure and hospitality outlets.

The improvements we’re now starting as part of Connecting Sheffield: City Centre will seamlessly link with these projects to and further contribute towards our cleaner, greener, thriving city centre.  

Enabling more people to walk, wheel or cycle for shorter trips, while improving access by public transport, is crucial to help us improve air quality further at the same time as growing the city centre economy to create new jobs and vibrancy.  

The green streets and spaces that we will create by pedestrianising roads, creating wider pavements and adding more planting and benches will provide a better environment for people to relax, rest and spend time in the city centre. These measures will allow us to create an improved environment for increasing numbers of people to live and work in the city centre, helping to minimise the need for new housing out of town in the green belt.

The changes being progressed as part of Connecting Sheffield: City Centre provide a benchmark for the future of travel across all of Sheffield.

Meadowhall is an important asset for the city and the city centre needs to be different, with an alternative offer to Meadowhall. The plans for the city centre focus on making the area more attractive as a residential location, whilst providing a better environment for people to spend more time outdoors. 

Alongside other city centre projects, like Heart of the City and the improvements on Fargate, our city centre will become more vibrant and appealing, competing with other city centres across the North, but with the added individuality and uniqueness of the Outdoor City ‘feel’.

Sheffield is becoming home to renowned bars and restaurants, as well as boasting a strong independent retail offer. And more businesses are choosing to call the Heart of the City their home. Alongside some great leisure opportunities, Sheffield city centre has something different to offer. A city centre for everyone. 

There is also evidence to suggest that making public space improvements leads to more footfall in city centres and can contribute to people spending more when they’re there.

Research in The UK and Germany in the 1990s carried out by Hass-Klau (1993) reported commercial benefits ranging from 20% to 40%. A review of studies by Newby (1992), Hass-Klau (1993) and the European Federation for Transport and Environment (EFTE, undated) suggests a range of 10% to 25% for retail turnover (Whitehead et al., 2006). The authors calculated that retail footfall increased by about a third (32.3%) and retail turnover by an average of 17% as a direct result of improvements to the pedestrian environment.

Investing in the public realm and walking can provide a competitive return compared to other transport-related measures. Litman estimates that walking and other non-motorised transport projects typically increase retail sales by 30% (Litman, 2002; Burden and Litman, 2011).

After the redevelopment of the Peace Gardens we saw a 35% increase in footfall in Sheffield, and an additional spend of £12.20 per visitor. 

Improvements on Castlegate have created over 500 jobs already and is projected to create 1,600 in total, and a local survey showed 98% of people want to see more green streets in the city. Read more in the Pedestrian Pound report. 

Encouraging more people to walk, wheel, cycle or use public transport to travel into and around the city centre will ultimately help improve localised air quality, especially if these trips have previously been made by private car. The Connecting Sheffield programme and City Centre project have also been developed closely alongside wider plans to improve air quality across the city and contribute to Sheffield’s move towards becoming net zero carbon.  

The funding from the Transforming Cities Fund (TCF) is from central government and sits outside the council’s day-to-day budget for services. It is not funded by council tax. TCF funding is only available for the delivery of improvements in public transport, walking, wheeling and cycling to connect people to job opportunities. Despite other important issues, improving our infrastructure for public transport, walking, wheeling and cycling is extremely important too. It can help to address climate change, improve air quality and offer more ways for people to travel around the city, which is crucial to wellbeing, equality and access to job opportunities. 

This first phase of Connecting Sheffield, funded by TCF, is also a big part of regenerating our city centre, which is important in enabling Sheffield to attract more investment and new employers that bring new jobs. 

The cycle routes across the city centre will better connect the area to inner city neighbourhoods and the employment opportunities along the Lower Don Valley via high-quality and, where possible, segregated cycling infrastructure. The routes will also make it quick and easy to travel into and around the city centre by cycle, helping to reduce car journeys and congestion and contributing to improved air quality. 

Extra space in the city centre allows for the creation of a better, safer environment for pedestrians and cyclists – encouraging more people to access the centre in this way. The aim is to create cycling routes that are suitable for families to use safely.

The city centre cycling routes will connect to new cycle routes towards Nether Edge, Kelham Island / Neepsend and beyond. 

Safe and secure cycle storage in convenient locations will make it easy for people to cycle for their regular commute. The City Centre Cycle Hub is now open at Charter Square. It offers secure cycle storage provision for a small monthly fee, with an integrated workshop space for repairs and changing facilities. There are also bike storage hubs at Sheffield Midland Station and Meadowhall Interchange.

Cycle stands are already available in various locations across the city centre, and we will add more in places like Pinstone Street, close to the Peace Gardens and Surrey Street. In these locations, you must provide your own locks, and storage is at your own risk, as with cars parked in parking bays across the city.

We already have good evidence from engagement on our Transport Strategy that lots of people want to cycle but they don’t feel that our roads currently provide the facilities and infrastructure to make this an attractive choice. Our aim is to make cycling safer and to provide improved routes that are clearer for people to follow because that’s what they have told us is stopping them travelling by cycle. 

Especially for shorter trips, cycling is an efficient and quick way to get around, and there’s strong evidence to show that large numbers of people take this option in places where the right facilities are provided. 

The more people who cycle, the less traffic congestion we have, which can help reduce trips across the city and the impact on communities living on main routes. Being more active while travelling also significantly improves our health and wellbeing.

We recognise that Sheffield’s hills are an obstacle to cycling. However, there are still several possible areas where cycling doesn’t have to involve tackling big hills. In our Transport Strategy, and through other work we’ve done, we have identified some of the less hilly parts of Sheffield such as from Attercliffe, Darnall and Nether Edge into the city centre which would make for good and quite flat routes. Part of the rationale for the Transforming Cities Fund is to enable significant increases in cycling in these areas.

Electric bikes are still relatively expensive compared to conventional bikes. However, they are reducing in price, and the battery technology is improving. As a result, the number of people using e-bikes is increasing. 

We are committed to trialling electric bikes by making them available on loan or on a lease for people to try out and see how they make the hills less of a perceived barrier. We are also making e-cargo bikes available for city businesses to trial. The investment in high-quality, safe cycling infrastructure will ensure suitable infrastructure is in place, whether you’re using a regular bike or an e-bike

We have looked at best practice elsewhere and our Transport Strategy concluded that the example to follow was that in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands they use separate cycle routes, protected by kerbing, designed to keep cyclists away from motorised traffic where it is busy or where larger vehicles like buses regularly use these routes. Other streets are designed to ensure vehicle speeds, and the number of vehicles are reduced to a safer level. This approach makes cycling less daunting and more attractive.

Cross city centre bus corridors have simplified routes through the city centre, allowing buses to travel more quickly and avoid congestion hot spots helping to improve bus service reliability. We have now relocated some bus stops so that passengers will end and start their journey at stops located closer together in the city centre, making routes easier to follow. 

The new Rockingham Street ‘hub’ of high-quality bus stops is in place near Pounds Park. There is also a plan to introduce a new bus gate between Devonshire Lane and Wellington Street – we are doing some extra work to understand what the effects of this might be, before we finalise any plans. 

The new bus routing enables people to directly access key points in the changing city centre, like Rockingham Street, Moorhead, and Moorfoot.

The bus gates on Furnival Gate and Arundel Gate also give increased priority to buses ensuring fast and reliable journeys. On Arundel Gate, we’ll formalise the high-quality bus corridor, between Charles Street and the Novotel, which will give passengers better access to key shopping and leisure areas. There will be improved bus shelters on the O2 Academy side of Arundel Gate too.   

Existing bus routes will remain, but we’ll start work later in 2025 so buses can travel down Rockingham Street from West Street rather than using Carver Street and Division Street. This will make access to the Rockingham Street ‘hub’ simpler and more efficient. Though the walking route will be longer for some people, due to missing the stop at Carver Street, the Sheffield Connect service stops at Rockingham Street where passengers can interchange for other city centre destinations.  

Our plans are designed to ensure that bus services will still allow people to access the core of the city centre, with stops located within just a few minutes’ walk or wheel from the main active areas. 

Yes, we’ve already installed two new shelters with real-time information on Furnival Gate near H&M, opposite Union Street. 

We’ve already installed an enforced bus gate which only allows buses, taxis and bikes to travel along Furnival Gate between Pinstone Street and Furnival Gate Roundabout. We also plan to install an enforced bus gate on Furnival Gate, coming out of the city, near its junction with Matilda Way as part of the Connecting Sheffield: City Centre project. By reducing traffic in these areas, we can contribute to improving access for public transport and make it easier for people to walk and wheel between Pinstone Street and The Moor.

Arundel Gate is a key bus corridor and provides an important route for bus access to the city centre. The project will provide new modern bus shelters with real time passenger information at several, but not all, stops.

With fewer cars and vans travelling towards High Street and Park Square beyond the Novotel Hotel, journey times and reliability will improve, and we’ll ensure there’s enough capacity for buses. This, alongside new planting and greenery between Charles Street and the Novotel, will mean the environment of Arundel Gate is greatly improved. Since we installed the bus gate at the Novotel, we have already seen some improvements to bus journey times and reliability.

The bus station is not affected by the current phase of Connecting Sheffield. The Arundel Gate Interchange plays an even more important role as we’ve increased services in this location to give better access to the city centre.

We have positioned bus stops as close as we can to the city centre, but there may be a slightly longer walk or wheel in some instances. However, depending on the end destination, some bus stops are also likely to be closer. 

We have relocated some bus stops so that passengers will end and start their journey at stops located closer together in the city centre. So, while one journey may be longer, the other is likely to be shorter.

Bus stops on the bottom of Rockingham Street and on Furnival Gate will drop people close to, or at the heart of, the major shopping areas. 

The relocated bus stops on Arundel Gate near The Crucible will have new, high-quality bus shelters installed in late spring 2024.

In summer 2022, we launched the Sheffield Connect bus service with the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority.

The SC1 connects 12 bus stops in the city centre giving access to areas that regular bus services don’t reach. It allows people to hop onto the bus from the train, tram or other bus services at different points across the city centre and access key locations – up to every eight minutes. 

The SC2 runs up to every 20 minutes, connecting The Moor, Arundel Gate, the Interchange, Castlegate and West Bar.

Both Sheffield Connect services run seven days a week, and are fully electric, providing zero-emission transport into the heart of the city centre. It’s also free to travel on both services. 

You can view the route and timetable online via the Travel South Yorkshire website.  

The new bus hub is now in place on Rockingham Street, with improved shelters and information displays.

Instead of using Carver Street – Division Street – Rockingham Street, we will change the junction of West Street and Rockingham Street to allow buses to turn into Rockingham Street to provide a quicker, more direct route. Rockingham Street, which is currently one-way when travelling from Division Street towards West Street, will be made two-way and a bus gate is planned to be introduced between Devonshire Lane and Wellington Street, access for buses travelling towards Charter Row only. We will retain access to all premises on Rockingham Street. We plan to implement these changes in 2025.

Bus priority measures include bus gates and bus lanes which means only public transport, including taxis and bikes can travel through them during the hours they operate. Bus priority also involves measures like detecting buses and giving them priority on their approach through traffic signals.

This helps buses to run on time which makes public transport more reliable, and a realistic and attractive alternative to car travel. Fewer people driving means less congestion for everyone, whether you travel by car often, sometimes or never.

A bus can carry far more passengers than a car, so if we can improve infrastructure for buses and make journeys quicker and more reliable, we hope to encourage more people to travel by bus rather than by car which will mean fewer car journeys being made. This will reduce congestion for people who need to drive, help to improve air quality and support the city’s economy by getting more people to work with less difficulty.

Our plans to grow the city include an additional 36,000 homes across Sheffield, with up to 20,000 planned for the city centre. So, we need to have better options for people to move around the city and avoid additional congestion. We want to make the bus a better, more realistic option for people, that’s more reliable and quicker to its destination.

While some car access routes will change, you’ll still be able to access car parks across the city centre.

We’ll need to remove on-street pay and display and disabled parking on Surrey Street and Charles Street. 

We will prioritise a number of existing on-street parking spaces for blue badge holders on Union Street, Leopold Street and Burgess Street to compensate for the spaces we need to remove, and ensure that spaces closest to some of the city’s shops and services are available for people who have the greatest mobility needs. 

The bus gates we’re proposing on parts of Furnival Gate and Rockingham Street, and the one we’ve installed on Arundel Gate, will reduce the number of cars and vans on these routes. This will make bus journeys quicker and more reliable.

There are around 9,000 car parking spaces available in the city centre, with parking starting from £1 per hour. You can find more information on the Sheffield City Council website. 

The key aim of Connecting Sheffield is to encourage more people to walk, wheel, cycle or catch public transport into the city centre where possible by making these attractive, safe and reliable choices. But we understand that car access will remain important for many people. So, you’ll still be able to access the city centre and car parks, but your journey right through the city centre might look different so we can reduce traffic in the civic heart and create more space for people and events.

Part of Pinstone Street, between Cross Burgess Street and Fargate, and part of Surrey Street, between Fargate and Norfolk Street, will be pedestrian and cycle only zones with restricted access for loading and servicing. The restricted access will allow delivery vehicles to enter the zone between 6pm and 10am each day. You’ll be able to deliver to Surrey Street via an intercom-controlled bollard entry point on Fargate where it meets High Street, or via Pinstone Street. There will be no entry from Norfolk Street, but we are looking at the possibility of including a small turning head at the junction of Surrey Street and Norfolk Street. You’ll be able to deliver to the upper part of Pinstone Street around the Town Hall and Peace gardens from the lower part of Pinstone Street. 

The loading bays on Norfolk Street and Surrey Street (outside Trailfinders) will remain, but vehicles won’t be able to park in the middle of the road like they do currently. We’re keen to ensure that the loading bays are kept as free as possible for loading and unloading, and we can be flexible about what loading looks like. 

We hope that by giving clarity of no parking in the area we will reduce the number of, and conflict between, vehicles in the area. We will provide a small new loading bay on Norfolk Street (near Miller and Carter) that will be available to permit holders only. Larger delivery vehicles that need to service the area around Norfolk Street / Surrey Street should turn round on Surrey Place to exit the area forwards.

The nature of the changes that may impact you depend on your location. We will allow access for deliveries in all circumstances, but they will be timed to specific hours.

The nature of the changes that may impact you depend on your location. We will allow access for deliveries in all circumstances, but they will be timed to specific hours. 

We have assessed all the proposed changes to understand the impact they will have on surrounding roads. Enabling people to make more trips using public transport, on foot or by bike will reduce traffic and make the city centre a safer, more pleasant place to spend time, becoming more people focused.

According to our planning and analysis, we have concluded that we can accommodate any displacement of traffic on the road network.

Similarly to Fargate and The Moor, taxis will not be able to use the sections of Pinstone Street or Surrey Street covered by the proposed pedestrian and cycle zone. Only loading for local businesses and services will be permitted at certain times. 

Bus gates will also allow Hackney carriage taxis and private hire vehicles to use them. People will still be able to be picked up and dropped off by taxis wherever it is safe to do so, just as you can now.

There are some proposed changes to the number and size of taxi ranks on Rockingham Street. We have already started discussions around mitigations for these changes with the trade.

‘Bringing the Outdoor City into the City’ and making key streets more attractive and greener is a key ambition of Connecting Sheffield: City Centre. 

We will create new planting, greenery and landscaping, integrated with flood mitigation measures, on pedestrian routes along the newly created space running down Pinstone Street, Rockingham Street, Charles Street and Arundel Gate, similar to those we have created through ‘Grey to Green’ projects at Cambridge Street and Union Street in the Heart of the City. 

The project will use an integrated approach bringing together the public space improvements with the need to provide movements for walking, wheeling and cycling. The planting areas will help shape people’s route choice, manage busy pedestrian flows and create more space between people walking, wheeling and cycling and motorised traffic on the road. 

We aim to create a healthier city life with diverse, attractive spaces that encourage people to enjoy the city centre. This multi-functional ‘Green Street’ approach brings together the connectivity needs of the transport system with an environment that’s vibrant and adaptive to climate change, bringing benefits for both people and the environment.

This project provides the opportunity to improve the environment in the city centre, creating green streets and planting more trees, shrubs and flowers. There will be a net increase in the number of trees in the city centre. 

We don’t plan to remove any trees at this stage, but we are currently doing tree root surveys to confirm if there is any potential conflict with the design proposals. 

Any decisions on tree removal won’t be clear until we finalise the designs. 

We will consider any potential tree removal with the full involvement of the Street Tree Partnership, affected parties and stakeholders to determine the best overall approach. 

Where we show that we’ll replace cobbling, we’ll swap it for with high-quality paving which has a smoother surface and is easier to walk, wheel and cycle on. The paving will be consistent throughout Fargate, Pinstone Street, Surrey Street and Charles Street. You can see an example of the paving which is currently being laid on Fargate.

We have designed the project in line with up-to-date highway design standards which incorporate the needs of all road users. The principle behind the cycle routes is that that they are segregated and so we’ll use clear differences between the footway and cycleway. Crossing points will give priority to pedestrians. We will lay tactile paving to segregate footways and cycle routes.

You can still be picked up and dropped off in cars or by taxis wherever it’s safe. We are locating bus stops as close to the centre as possible, in convenient places. The Sheffield Connect bus service also runs around the city centre. It runs seven days a week, with a regular service through the day and runs two routes to connect to key locations in the city centre, including Leopold Street and Balm Green.

Overall, we hope the plans will make it better for older and vulnerable people to enjoy the city centre. Our plans see reduced traffic in and around key shopping areas of the city, as well as new pedestrianised areas. We also aim to make the city centre more attractive, and increasing public space will feature benches for people to rest and relax across the area. 

The Sheffield Connect bus service also runs around the city centre. It runs seven days a week, with a regular service through the day and runs two routes to connect to key locations in the city centre.

We will need to relocate some on-street blue badge car parking spaces in the city centre, so we will lose some general pay and display on-street parking. We will prioritise some existing on-street parking spaces for blue badge holders to ensure that the spaces closest to some of the city’s shops and services are available for people who have the greatest mobility needs.  

The primary locations we’re looking at to relocate the disabled parking bays we’re removing are, at this stage, on Union Street and Norfolk Street. We are aiming to add more disabled spaces in these locations than we will lose on Surrey Street, and we are looking at options for street furniture to enable people to stop and rest if they need to along their journey. New blue badge spaces will be accessible for all, which does reduce the total we can implement as spaces needed are bigger. 

At the moment, disabled parking spaces are still available outside the library, but we acknowledge that these might not be accessible to everyone due to the important safety work that we’re doing at the library. 

The city also has a number of high-quality public car parks close to shops and amenities in the city centre. 

We’ll also accommodate drop offs for weddings and VIP visitors to the Town Hall by changing the parking bay on Barkers Pool from ‘police vehicles only’ to ‘permit holders’ for special events.  

Increased pavement space means commuters and visitors can browse and travel through the area easily. This will create outdoor space that can cater for events associated with the Town Hall and Peace Gardens. It will also offer an opportunity for businesses like cafes and restaurants to provide outdoor seating.

You can find out more about Blue Badge parking and who can apply for a Blue Badge in Sheffield via the Sheffield City Council website. 

There are around 9,000 car parking spaces available in the city centre, with parking starting from £1 per hour. You can find more information online at: https://www.sheffield.gov.uk/parking/city-centre-car-parking

No – you can still access all city centre car parks, but it may mean that your route to certain car parks may change.