* As a southerner, I have absolutely no axe to grind wherever it is located, I'm just dismayed at the way that local bickering delays necessary investment.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry at that comment, but it sums up the parochial nature of arguments that we have around here.
For example, I don't imagine people in Sheffield were so fussed about HS2 until they found that "that lot in Leeds" were getting a station - therefore we must have one too...
It's about 3 miles or 5 km so for those arriving by HS2 and wishing to take a taxi from Meadowhall it is not an epic excursion to the city centre. Meadowhall is also pretty good for rail and tram connections, not just for the city centre but for the broader South Yorkshire area in general. Almost all trains that serve Sheffield Midland station either already serve Meadowhall as well or could be made to do so. There is space for more classic platforms and platform lengthening to accomodate more classic services and even the new tram-trains from Rotherham might be diverted fairly easily via a new loop constructed across open ground to call at the interchange station. Victoria would be much worse for local connectivity as no other train service calls there, nor any current tram line, and it's less 'central' than the Midland station anyway.
Ideally any Sheffield central station should be adjacent to the Midland station for easy local train and tram connections. That would be very difficult and expensive however and would probably force a bored tunnel approach route from either direction and a very large station box construction under Sheaf Valley Park, not easy due to the steep hillside involved and the likely depth required for the HS tunnels to pass under the river Don nearby.
In addition to it's good and potentially better local public transport access Meadowhall clearly also has very good road access directly from the M1, without any new traffic generated having to get into the centre and clogging up local roads in the process.
I'd love to see a Central station, but not at any cost and most definitely not thereby making it difficult to interchange with other local public transport, so on many levels and most importantly cost / benefit, I'd say Meadowhall wins hands down over Victoria.
All good points.
Ideally we'd have a station in the middle of Sheffield city centre (though ideally Midland Station would be in central Sheffield, rather than across the inner ring road, at the bottom of the valley...).
The problem is, there's no easy way to squeeze a straight route through Sheffield's valleys (and, given the speed of HS2, you can't get away with some of the bends that Victorian engineers left us with).
Sheffield Midland is build directly above the River Sheaf (if you are interested in subterranean Sheffield then you could lose an hour or two to this thread >>
http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/megatron-sheffield-june-and-july-2015.t97955), which means you can't put a railway line underneath the current station (which is often suggested for Birmingham New Street).
Going above the current line would be equally hard - given the various road bridges/ tram line/ foot bridges above the current alignment - as well as Sheffield Parkway and Park Square roundabout.
Given how busy the two track northern throat at Midland currently is (a dozen services an hour or more?), you'll never squeeze High Speed services through the current platforms either.
Meadowhall isn't perfect, but it's currently got nine non-stop trains to Sheffield Midland per hour with a journey time of about five minutes (plus eight scheduled tram services per hour which run through the heart of the city centre and on to suburban Sheffield). So you're not too far away in time terms.
From somewhere like the Cathedral/ University, Meadowhall is about fifteen minutes further away than Midland (pick a time of day/direction to suit your argument -
http://www.supertram.com/uploads/KC2266PTESupertramTramGuide2015WEB_4.pdf)
You've got loads of car parking, you've got regular trains to Barnsley/ Doncaster/ Rotherham etc, you've got a busy bus station also served by National Express/ Megabus. There's the M1 next door, so convenient for much of the region.
Victoria is a waste of time. It's not in the actual city centre, it has no trams, it has no trains, it has no bus station, it would struggle for much parking.
Build a route into Sheffield and you run the risk of it being a dead end branch off the main route, i.e. getting one train an hour whilst everything else runs non stop from Toton to Leeds. I can't see Sheffield being important enough to delay Leeds/ Newcastle passengers down significantly. A station at Meadowhall comes with the benefits of allowing everything to stop there.
Obviously with enough money, everything becomes feasible, and we could have some crazy system of tunnels and bridges full op Blue Sky Thinking. But I'd rather we spent some of that magic money tree on some practical improvements (more four tracking for local services, that kind of boring stuff).
PS: I've made no mention of TramTrain because I don't know if it'll be ready by the 2030s...