When you factor in having to get from Midland to Meadowhall then really it’s not much slower. People want direct connections without the inconvenience of having to travel to an out of town shopping centre.
You mean a journey of under ten minutes (with nine trains per hour)?
Or around fifteen minutes difference for a direct tram service from Meadowhall to Cathedral/University (compared to getting the tram from Midland)?
Not too arduous (Midland is still at the bottom of the hill, some walk from the "proper" city centre)
Imagine if it was proposed that HS2 should terminate in Manchester at the Trafford Centre because after all there'll be a perfectly good tram connection to the city centre. No, I can't imagine that either.
Does the Trafford Centre have a busy heavy rail station with lines towards all major towns in the region? I mean, maybe the comparison would work if you'd chosen Warrington, i.e. a place with good connections towards Liverpool/ Manchester/ Chester etc.
Sheffield had the option for a station inside the city boundaries (Meadowhall), good regional connections, fast frequent services to London and Leeds... instead, the council gambled in the hope of the whole HS2 route being diverted through Victoria (hoping that Sheffield was important enough warrant slowing everyone else's journeys down)... we shouldn't have taken the risk as we've ended up with a much worse set up - just an hourly London train (which will run relatively slowly along the existing line through Chesterfield etc, providing much small time savings compared to a Meadowhall station) and no realistic hope of the improved service to Leeds that Sheffield could have had).
We also hobble ourselves by trying to accommodate long HS2 trains at Midland where there's barely enough space for existing services in 2020 (and the geography - station built directly on top of the river, steep hill to the east, ring road hemming the station in to the west) - so existing services may suffer because we need to give up one of the through platforms for HS2 services laying over (whilst Manchester/ Leeds will get dedicated infrastructure).
Meanwhile, Leeds gets a faster London service (since the line can now run east of Rotherham), making Sheffield even less attractive than Leeds when it comes to London services (fewer services, slower services) - ruining the competitive advantage that we'd have had if a station inside Sheffield had been on the route from London to Leeds.
Realistically, Sheffield isn't a "top tier" city - some other cities either won't have any HS2 service (Bradford) or will be similarly reliant upon having HS2 services trundle along on conventional lines (Liverpool) or have a station on the edge of town (Derby, Nottingham). We had a reasonable deal with a Meadowhall station but got greedy and the gamble failed.
