Thursday 31 August 2017

Petre Street Peters Out (1)

Sheffield Route-Slash Shock!
In Sheffield Petre Street runs north-east from Burngreave to Grimesthorpe, seen here on a Streetmap, running from bottom left to top right.
It once had trams ...
... but these were withdrawn early (for Sheffield) in 1925, to be replaced by a bus service.
All along the road, to the left and to the right, was residential accommodation; but in the late sixties demolition began and continued until the mid seventies.
At the Burngreave end (Streetmap lower left) some new housing replaced the old as here in Canada Street (CAN ST), then ...
... and now!
At the Grimesthorpe end there was limited redevelopment around Margate Drive.
But in between the two, a blasted heath ...
... slowly filled up with "light industrial" premises.
Buses showed this on their blinds ...
... which was odd, because there was no "Reform Chapel" on Petre Street.

Buses, by now numbered 34, actually ran in a loop at the Grimesthorpe end ...
... with their "time point" being the Wesleyan Reform Union Chapel (Don't ask!) on Upwell Lane.
Buses waited time outside the church, but on Sunday mornings a special stop was provided 100 yards further along Upwell Lane so buses starting their engines would not disturb worshippers. As far as fbb can tell, the church is still in business.

The loop is now very similar but enforced by a revised road network ...
... but today's Petre Street services still operate that historic twiddle.

In 1970 the service was extended further north-east to low Wincobank. This scheme was designed to provide links from developing housing off Holywell Road into the city centre.
The one bus an hour extension also provided a limited service to Standon Road ...
... and, back at the redeveloped Grimesthorpe, part of the service visited a mini loop at Margate Drive.
Under the People's Republic of South Yorkshire, with its highly subsidised bus system, further services were developed to serve "difficult areas" between Holywell Road and Upper Wincobank but under privatisation and commercialisation many of these were not viable.

Rather than increasing our readers' confusion, let us jump to the very recent past.

We have a service 35 along Petre Street ...
... running every 30 minutes and diving off he main drag into the various chunks of residential development. fbb uses the route number casually but various combinations have been used, each change brings just a little more confusion. As of today, there is still a bus every 30 minutes along a near deserted Petre Street ...
... although half the service in numbered 70. The route(s) still clamber up into the estate off Holywell Road ...
... and one bus an hour (35) nips up and down Standon Road after the obligatory diversion to visit the glorious Meadowhell shopping centre.
If you have followed all this, you need some kind of endurance award; so we pause until tomorrow when we chart the changes from Sunday 3rd and see just what Liz Weber is complaining about.

 Next Petre Street blog : Friday 1st September 

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