Talking Solutions, 17/04/2002 1
WORKSHOPS TO MAKE PROGRESS ON AIR QUALITY
IN THE CITY CENTRE
WORKSHOP 1
Wednesday 10 th April, 2002
Skyline Suite, Ponds Forge, Sheffield
PARTICIPANTS
TABLE 1
Mick Empsall City Centre Forward Planning, SCC
Tina Robinson South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive
John Forrester Stockholm Environmental Institute
Fiona Booth Student
Louise Thomas Environmental Protection Service, SCC
TABLE 2
Ben Morley Objective 1
Andy Nolan Environmental Manager, The University of Sheffield
Steve Stockholm Environmental Institute
Steve Simmons Environmental Protection Service, SCC
Caroline Turner Environmental Protection Service, SCC
TABLE 3
Neil Cameron Cycling Forum and Sheffield Hallam University
Andy Elleker Environmental Protection Service, SCC
Nick Chaplin Environmental Protection Service, SCC
Cllr Sylvia Dunkly SCC
TABLE 4
John Taylor Chamber of Trade
Inspector Trevor Bichard South Yorkshire Police
Cllr Martin Brelsford SCC
Mark Daly Environmental Protection Service, SCC
Paul Thornton Environmental Protection Service, SCC
Paul Rosen Stockholm Environmental Institute
Facilitators
Rina Jones Talking Solutions
Ogo Osammor Environmental Protection Service, SCC
Apologies
Nick Silvani Planning Transport and Highways, SCC
Iain Gardiner Environment Manager, English Welsh and Scottish Railway


Talking Solutions, 17/04/2002 2
INTRODUCTION
This report presents a record of participants' discussion at the workshop - everything
that was written down by participants or on the flip chart at the front is reproduced
here. Any explanations about the stages of the workshop are written in italics.
The programme covered the following:
- Introductions
- Issues feedback (from sheets completed as people arrived)
- How to recognise progress - building blocks of a successful programme
- Listing of ideas
- Initial evaluation of ideas
- Looking ahead to workshop 2
ISSUES RAISED
As people arrived they were asked to write on individual sheets, what for them are
the key issues, problems or concerns connected to the city centre. They were
grouped together as follows and fed back after the formal introductions.
A) PUBLIC TRANSPORT
• Real support for public transport
• Decisions made on Transport
Policy (Local & National)
• Transport
• Cost of Public Transport
• Use of Public Transport
• Quality & Affordable Public
Transport
B) TRAFFIC CONGESTION
• Efficient Transportation
• Too much traffic
• Commuter Traffic at peak hours
• A place to visit versus
Congestion
• Congestion along arterial routes
passing residential areas
• Increasing traffic congestion as
city centre is regenerated.
• Traffic congestion
C) CONGESTION
• Awareness raising
• Successful City Centre
• Economic Viability
• Economy
• Empty Business Premises
• Job Creation
• Social inclusion/exclusion
• Access to work
• Regeneration will increase traffic
E) HEALTH
• Improving human health
F) ACCESS
• Business - Deliveries
• Access by car
• Park & ride
• Confusion on parking policy
• Accessibility - different
needs
- commuter (9-5)
- though traffic
- shopper (9.30-4)
- residents in city/leaving
- tourist
- deliveries
- after hours access
• Access - not just by car -also
pedestrian, bike, public
transport
• Parking - location/cost - what
do people need to access
• Access for people with
disabilities

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G) QUALITY OF LIFE
• More open space for City
centre residents
• Lack of green open spaces
• Pedestrian comfort
• Residential development
• Attractive place to live, work &
socialise
• Quality of environment for
growing number of people
living in city centre
• Few quality spaces for people
H) POLLUTION
• Impact on health
• Dirty buses & trains
• Polluted city (18% of
Sheffielders think this is the
dirtiest UK city)
• Emissions , buildings and
masts
I) SAFETY/CRIME
• Fear of crime
DISCUSSION ON ISSUES RAISED
After summarising the general results to the group as a whole, the following
comments were made by the group.
• There are a large number of independent issues
• All revolves around transport - is this a symptom?
• Resolves around economy
• Resolves around mobility
• Air quality has not come out as a big issue
• Few people mentioned health
• Will always come back to cars & parking
• Buses can be very polluting - a lot of them in the city centre
• Achieving genuine sustainable development
• Regeneration of City centre connects all strands. Has an impact on everything
including more cars if successful and more people. This also creates more
opportunities and more jobs.
• Infrastructure has not been mentioned. Are roads in the right place? If
regeneration is managed properly then cars are not the only path ie putting the
right public transport in place.
• Regeneration about more people too, more jobs & opportunities
• Can have regeneration without more cars - not the only path
• Pollution in centre would benefit from hybridised vehicles. A change in
Government policy could create an attitude to "go for it".
• Government policy plays a role ie an easy way to get rid of NO2 is to put more
diesels on the road but this would increase other pollutants.
• Health seems to be NO2 -focussed, but NO2 is relatively innocuous compared
to other pollutants, resulting in 100 - 200 respiratory emissions in Sheffield per

Talking Solutions, 18/04/2002 4
year. 8,000 people live in the City centre air action zone - the number of
admissions from them would be 2 per year [due to NO2], so to save one
respiratory emission a year would have a very small benefit.
• Other pollutants are seen as being more dangerous ie particulates.
Particulates are more significant and higher in City centre
• Public Transport verses the car: this issue has a health impact but its no good
replacing a relative "clean car" with a dirty diesel bus or train
• Health of all City's inhabitants affected by success of City centre - both
negative (if there is an increase in pollution) and positive (vibrancy affecting
quality of life). Economic benefits greater affect on health than air quality.
• It is a mistake to say that there is a conflict between economy and health;
money can make a quality environment. A clean healthy City is a pre-condition
for healthy economic development, without this business will not
come to the City.
• People choose to move to a quality environment.
• Far more people work in City centre then live there. The number of people
affected is not just confined to the people who live in the City there are also
the people who work in the City centre and visitors (human traffic).
• Number of people living in City centre growing
• It is a requirement of the Government to set targets for different pollutants not
just NO2. None are a problem for the City to reach its targets except Nitrogen
Dioxide.
• Reduction in traffic congestion helps business
• Access to the City by train - lines are not electrified and use heavy diesel
systems. Many people arrive by train - dirty diesel
BUILDING BLOCKS OF A SUCCESSFUL PROGRAMME
At this point the group were asked to call out some general principles that could be
used to help decide whether individual projects and a series of them would add up to
a successful overall programme.
1. It is sustainable (social, economic, environmental) - does it strike a balance?
2. The power to implement the measures need to be held locally - ideas need to
meet local needs (NB there is a move away from planning decisions being made
at a local level). A degree of realism about where the power is held is necessary
eg. the Passenger Transport Executive would recommend the use of cleaner
engines but control of rolling stock it is in the hands of the Strategic Rail Authority.
3. Quality inward investment attracted and unsuitable schemes rejected - need
to be brave. Sheffield City Council and others' policies need to be right in the first
place - need to recognise impacts on air quality.
4. Measures must be sellable to users - measure concerns by support from users.
There is a need for a change in human behaviour. Can close roads but it has to

Talking Solutions, 18/04/2002 5
be sellable to the user. A measure of the success would be the support of people
in 5 years time.
5. Needs to be inclusive - needs to involve individuals and organisations, not just
those here today
6. Output targets that are measurable
7. Must have other positive outputs not just air quality eg. an increase in
mobility to the City centre - benefits need to be explicit
8. Volume of activity rises, NO2 falls
9. Addresses other categories not just NO2. No one solution to all pollutants, all
impinge on the Quality of Air. Need to know constituent parts and what target
need to be met. There is Nitrogen Dioxide and 7 other pollutants, the City has
problems only with meeting targets on Nitrogen Dioxide, and the others are less
of a problem. However, there may be more stringent targets to meet on different
pollutants in the future.
10. Incorporate ability to change targets. Change in the targets need to be
included in policy and needs to be able to accommodate more changes.
11. Cost benefit analysis. It seems that Nitrogen Dioxide pollution is a small problem
but seems to have enormous cost implications.
(Answer: Nitrogen Dioxide is seen as an indicator of Air Quality in general -reduce
this and other pollutants reduce at the same time. Air quality targets reflect
a threshold of effects - long term exposure to lower levels of pollution still have an
effect - there is no set level where there is no health issue involved. Future
changes in policy will probably take a precautionary approach to this. It is
estimated that some 24,000 people nation-wide had their deaths brought forward
due to air pollution.
12. Integrate ideas with other policies and strategies (eg economic, regeneration,
residential, business planning)
(Additional discussion about vehicle testing
Q: "Would it be acceptable to the public to carry out emission testing on vehicles in
an Air Action Management area? Would the principal be useful?"
A: Pointed out that the framework for the test was already in the MOT and could be
a waste of resources. Also new cars are cleaner. MOT is only carried out once a
year and additional tests may catch the gross persistent polluter.)
GROUP IDEAS
During this session, participants worked in small groups to brainstorm what could be
done to tackle the issues /problems identified. The lists below record the results of
each table's brainstorming, recorded on flip chart sheets.
Flipcharts from individual tables
Table 1
• Create viability for LPG
• Walkway & Cycleway Along Rivers - Sheaf, Porter, Don, Canals
• Use canals as waterways for freight & leisure

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• Improve cohesiveness of city centre
• Publicity campaign (public)
• Pedestrianise City centre
• Improve arterial public transport
• Park and Ride
• Improve key players
• Fuel shift to zero/low emission vehicles
• Open spaces in city centre
• Create value for open spaces (awareness)
• Make city centre more attractive - facilities/cleanliness
• Extend time of bus lanes to Saturday - monitor use of bus lanes (ie that buses
do always use them)
Table 2
• Cheap public transport in City centre
• Smaller interchanges for public transport
• Car Free residential development especially student residents
• Car pools
• Restriction on car parking
• Rental cars for residents
• Car share schemes for City centre workers
• Widening of super-tram network - get it out to where workers live ie west of
city, Rotherham, Meadowhead etc.
• Air pollution impact from construction - particulates from buildings & vehicles
• Zero emission delivery vehicles for city centre
• Supertram used for deliveries
• Dispersion of commuting times - remove peaks in transport
• more flexible working
• School run/school buses - look at ways of reducing
• Make City centre a mixed community - not ghettoes eg students
• What needs to be in City centre & what doesn't
• Deliveries from City centre out - reduce car journeys into city
• Good infrastructure in City centre - what else is needed
• Need to promote City centre being used 24 hours a day
• Better signage - variable signage from ring road
• Role of ring road for getting people through City needs to be considered
• Incinerator - impacts
• Bike access on public transport - buses/supertram
• Public transport messaging
• Options need to be of high quality
• Electrify Northern Rail route
• Including use of canal for transport
Table 3
• Congestion charging/workplace charging
• Emissions testing?
• Off-peak - pedestrianisation - Sunday carnivals/other cultural events
• More trees/green open spaces

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• Low emission zone for City centre zone
• Park & ride - new areas near City boundary - Waverley
• Tram extension - (pick up traffic from South of City)
• Continue with car free residential development
• Better provision of cycle tracks/facilities to make less fragmented
• Extend city heating & power (to reduce area sources)
• Programme (more extensive) of encouraging green travel plans into existing
businesses
• Long term, extensive awareness raising campaigns - Health & transport
• Expense of workplace Parking £1,500 per space + business rates = £2,300 ish
(Leeds) promoting business case for Green travel plans (link to promotional
campaigns)
• Reducing need to travel - home working, distribution, school run
Table 4
• Parking - sings, number, improve
• Education
• Options - choices, alternatives, services
• Ring road
• Park & ride
• Bus priority
• Bus quality
• City centre zones - Park & Ride; bus routes - car free; pedestrian zones
• Low emission zone
• Financial rewards for good practice
• Quality bus zone - round robin bus routes
• Night deliveries (supertram)
• Extend supertram
• Subsidise Transport Services (Public): clean; reliable; affordable - free!
• Environmental changes
IDEAS AGREED
In the next stage of the work, each group selected ideas from its long list that they all
agreed were good ideas. They wrote the idea on a form and indicated:
a) which key issue/problem the idea addressed most directly (left hand colunm)
b) whether the idea positively helped, hindered or did not affect the other key
issues (all columns to the right).
The forms were collected at the front and grouped according to the key issue that
they address. The two following pages show the complete list.
IDEAS EVALUATED
The final three columns of the table show a very simple and quick 'scoring ' that
people did for each idea. People were asked to work as individuals on behalf of
whatever group they were representing at the workshop. They indicated whether they
could or couldn't live with it or were unsure. The numbers in the three columns record
the number of each type of response.


Talking Solutions, 18/04/2002 10
DISCUSSION AFTER AGREED IDEAS SECTION
• There is a lot of cross-over
• Same idea addresses different issues
• Didn't have time to go through whole list - don't reject if doesn't appear at front
• 46% of journeys in City centre are by public transport - mustn't lose those people
• Target where improvements need to be make - different parts of City - people
have different travel needs
• Look at journeys that people want to make and prioritise them.
• No-one came up with things to address health directly
• Health underpins everything
• Don't promote it as a health issue in the way to sell it may be re: traffic &
congestion
• Lots of resources in Sheffield already that can be built on eg tram & waterway
FEEDBACK FROM "CAN I LIVE WITH IT" SECTION
• Lot of "motherhood & apple pie" - no controversial ideas got through
• Easy to agree at this level
• Key players - Sheffield One & Sheffield first who are not here - they should be
kept informed
• Groups in the community eg the elderly, many have completely different views
• Can we have some link with or feedback from the M1 corridor Air Action Zone?
• Are the findings here linked to other partnership area
ON TO WORKSHOP 2 on May 8th
Between now and the next workshop, officers will be assessing the contribution that
the ideas generated will make to air quality improvements in the city centre. They will
be looking at the results of applying similar measures elsewhere in terms of
effectiveness at improving air quality, the cost etc.
At the next workshop:
• You will be joined by additional participants who were unable to attend
workshop 1.
• The group will work on the options towards an agreed shortlist of ideas
• Develop the list into a planned programme