I don’t think there’s much chance of expanding the overall railway “envelope”, given the geography (even if you close/divert the ring road, there’s the Sheaf/ Porter Brook/ hillside/ bottlenecks/ can’t build a double deck station!). If we are able to rip it up and start again then I’d be a lot more ambitious, but this is what I’d consider in increasing levels of “ambition”:
0. Forget about Victoria. It’s over. Let go. Weirdly, the same people so focussed on building a terribly located station far away from anything are often also those wanting to spend billions on better connecting stations like Pic and Vic in Manchester, because having services split between two city centre stations is seen as A Bad Thing. Same with people moaning about the mammoth trek between Curzon Street and New Street once HS2 is running, yet yearning for a Britain where cities like Nottingham and Leicester saw their London-bound trains spread between two stations I guess!
1. Bi-directional signals on all through lines! There are five through lines but (based on the pre-Covid timescales) from my memory, of the twenty departures per hour , two thirds either started at Sheffield or reversed there, so it’s very important that the through platforms can be utilised by such services to, or it puts too much of a strain on the bay platforms. My understanding was that the two easternmost through platforms aren’t signaled in both directions though? Happy to be corrected!
2. Sort out the track layout in the north throat, especially the single track that feeds the two busy bay platforms (three and four), and the speeds into/ out of them! sometimes we get services stacked on those platforms (e.g. the Adwick DMU has to wait for the Castleford DMU to get out of the platform two minutes earlier), the slow approach speeds and single track can snarl things up if something goes slightly wrong
3. Run terminating services from the north through to new terminal platforms somewhere south of the city (could be bays at an expanded Dore, could just be a bi-directional loop for ECS moves, but it would be good to have the option to keep DMUs out of the way)
4. Once you’ve sorted out any remodelling, electrification as far as Meadowhall, for bi-mode trains to get a faster acceleration from the bottom of the valley up to Attercliffe (where the line is much higher than surrounding land). I’m not demanding full electrification of all local lines, but many a long distance/ high speed service has been delayed by a 75mph DMU struggling in the throat
5. I don’t think we can make any/many changes to the buildings but it’s a shame that the re development didn’t extend the footbridge out over the A61 so that passengers would have had a “level” walk from part way down Howard Street, across Paternoster Row and Sheaf Street, entering the station at footbridge level
6. Ideally, build a third “island” by removing middle roads/ having better shapes and sized platforms on the other two “islands”. So much space wasted with the current set up. Handy to dump DMUs in the middle roads but we’d be much better having a depot/yard for them elsewhere like other cities have! If you’re building a real depot nearby then maybe you could squeeze another short platform or two - 1c and 1d for local trains, rather than the current little facilities at the south end
(
@2192 makes an excellent point about trams, that’s the kind of minor modification that would improve passenger experiences, rather than potentially standing at the exposed tram stop for best part of ten minutes, breathing in the filthy diesel fumes from the 222 in platform eight!)
