100 signatures reached
To: Manager, Tesco Extra, Savile St, Sheffield; Alessandra Bellini, Chief Customer Officer, Tesco PLCo
Tesco, please don't make us walk amidst moving cars
Please re-open the Spital St/Carlisle St entrance of the Tesco Extra Sheffield Savile Street store. People of all incomes and degrees of ability/disability need equal access to this critical source of food and other essentials.
Why is this important?
Another (but much more expensive) option would be to widen the ramp leading to the mid-level parking area/main entrance and provide effective vehicle/pedestrian segregation.
When approached, Tesco Management have said the closure is due to "incidents and undesirable behaviour" from people using the Carlisle St entrance. We appreciate that is a problem, but suggest that having a security guard and CCTV etc, at that entrance, plus effective co-operation with council and police, would solve the problem. (There is a security guard at the mid-level car park/main entrance; there should really be an additional traffic marshal ON the ramp.) We understand it saves money if you don't have to hire an extra security guard, but making your store basically difficult/dangerous to access for people without cars is not community- (or environmentally-) friendly.
Keeping the Carlyle St entrance closed discriminates against the disabled and those with limited incomes. It also results in people taking risks that may lead to serious injuries or worse (it's just a matter of time), and favours people who use cars over those who walk or use public transport.
To reach the other entrances, people must walk more than a third of a mile/600 metres (Googlemaps' estimated time to walk: 7 min) to get to the ONE pedestrian-only entrance (on the other side of a VERY large store) – or even further (at least half a mile/800 metres) to the lower car park entrance. (These pedestrian entrances are NOT signposted.)
Note: If the lift is out of order and you cannot cope with stairs, there is zero pedestrian access (except via the "travellator" from the lower car park, also accessed from Savile St. – a commercial/industrial zone in which nobody lives).
What people do instead is use the mid-level car park ramp (still an extra 250 metres/3 minutes' walk), which is intended for cars rather than people, and means that cars pass dangerously close to pedestrians (many of whom have small children with them), and at speed. This is very unsafe, yet there are no signs saying pedestrians should not use this ramp, nor that cars should beware or give room.
Thus, keeping the Carlisle St entrance closed encourages people to visit Tesco in cars/taxis rather than on foot/by bus (not very green), and disadvantages those on limited incomes (who don't have cars/can't afford a bus let alone a taxi), the elderly, those who are visually impaired or otherwise disabled, those using pushchairs/prams/wheelchairs, parents with small children in tow, and/or those who are carrying heavy shopping.
Here are some comments from people in the community:
"As a wheelchair user it requires me to spend even longer in the road than the average pedestrian as I need to use the dip at the crossing, and it is out-and-out dangerous. Cars speed around that corner, often not indicating. The bit of the road, that I can only presume is the walkway, is often full of trolleys and signs and of course is so narrow it isn't even wide enough for two people to cross. I feel safer going down the centre of the road and treating it similarly to walking on country roads."
===
"Silly and unsafe. During lockdown no cars used the ramp. Now they do. My granddaughter nearly got run over by a car going round the corner on the ramp. My husband told the folk at Tesco. It seems from their staff that the Management has permanently closed the top pedestrian entrance. We would like to see their risk assessment. Hope they look at this again soon. We don’t shop there with kids until they do. Life is worth more than shopping at our local shop."
===
"With small children, one in a pushchair, and shopping I really really resent being forced to walk the long way round, or dice with death, when car drivers have 2 choices of entrance. It totally discriminates against local people who don’t have access to a car."
===
"......it is really annoying having to carry all the shopping up the road; it's too much for the elderly and for people with disabilities."
===
"I've seen mums dragging prams, small kids and bags of shopping up the ramp as cars whizz down. It's totally unsafe... and no way those mums will choose the other exit, with small kids in tow that could be a good 10 mins onto the journey, with heavy bags and toddlers. The design of the Spital Hill entrance was bad, they need to find design solutions to make it better – not shut it."
===
When approached, Tesco Management have said the closure is due to "incidents and undesirable behaviour" from people using the Carlisle St entrance. We appreciate that is a problem, but suggest that having a security guard and CCTV etc, at that entrance, plus effective co-operation with council and police, would solve the problem. (There is a security guard at the mid-level car park/main entrance; there should really be an additional traffic marshal ON the ramp.) We understand it saves money if you don't have to hire an extra security guard, but making your store basically difficult/dangerous to access for people without cars is not community- (or environmentally-) friendly.
Keeping the Carlyle St entrance closed discriminates against the disabled and those with limited incomes. It also results in people taking risks that may lead to serious injuries or worse (it's just a matter of time), and favours people who use cars over those who walk or use public transport.
To reach the other entrances, people must walk more than a third of a mile/600 metres (Googlemaps' estimated time to walk: 7 min) to get to the ONE pedestrian-only entrance (on the other side of a VERY large store) – or even further (at least half a mile/800 metres) to the lower car park entrance. (These pedestrian entrances are NOT signposted.)
Note: If the lift is out of order and you cannot cope with stairs, there is zero pedestrian access (except via the "travellator" from the lower car park, also accessed from Savile St. – a commercial/industrial zone in which nobody lives).
What people do instead is use the mid-level car park ramp (still an extra 250 metres/3 minutes' walk), which is intended for cars rather than people, and means that cars pass dangerously close to pedestrians (many of whom have small children with them), and at speed. This is very unsafe, yet there are no signs saying pedestrians should not use this ramp, nor that cars should beware or give room.
Thus, keeping the Carlisle St entrance closed encourages people to visit Tesco in cars/taxis rather than on foot/by bus (not very green), and disadvantages those on limited incomes (who don't have cars/can't afford a bus let alone a taxi), the elderly, those who are visually impaired or otherwise disabled, those using pushchairs/prams/wheelchairs, parents with small children in tow, and/or those who are carrying heavy shopping.
Here are some comments from people in the community:
"As a wheelchair user it requires me to spend even longer in the road than the average pedestrian as I need to use the dip at the crossing, and it is out-and-out dangerous. Cars speed around that corner, often not indicating. The bit of the road, that I can only presume is the walkway, is often full of trolleys and signs and of course is so narrow it isn't even wide enough for two people to cross. I feel safer going down the centre of the road and treating it similarly to walking on country roads."
===
"Silly and unsafe. During lockdown no cars used the ramp. Now they do. My granddaughter nearly got run over by a car going round the corner on the ramp. My husband told the folk at Tesco. It seems from their staff that the Management has permanently closed the top pedestrian entrance. We would like to see their risk assessment. Hope they look at this again soon. We don’t shop there with kids until they do. Life is worth more than shopping at our local shop."
===
"With small children, one in a pushchair, and shopping I really really resent being forced to walk the long way round, or dice with death, when car drivers have 2 choices of entrance. It totally discriminates against local people who don’t have access to a car."
===
"......it is really annoying having to carry all the shopping up the road; it's too much for the elderly and for people with disabilities."
===
"I've seen mums dragging prams, small kids and bags of shopping up the ramp as cars whizz down. It's totally unsafe... and no way those mums will choose the other exit, with small kids in tow that could be a good 10 mins onto the journey, with heavy bags and toddlers. The design of the Spital Hill entrance was bad, they need to find design solutions to make it better – not shut it."
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