Two broken down trams on consecutive evenings caused delays and service suspension on Manchester Metrolink this week. The first incident happened at Deansgate-Castlefield on Tuesday 10th January with the second break down occurring at Piccadilly Gardens the following evening. Both incidents caused problems for people during the evening rush hour with services either completely suspended or running with delays.
On Tuesday 10th January services were briefly suspended after a tram broke down at Deansgate-Castlefield. The tram lost power at the tramstop at around 1730 and caused the Altrincham, Eccles and St Werburgh’s Road lines to be suspended for a time. The tram was moved out the way and services managed to resume by 1810, although delays were still being experienced throughout the evening. During the disruption potential Metrolink passengers were advised various local bus services were accepting their tickets.
Then on Wednesday 11th January a tram broke down at Piccadilly Gardens, again at approximately 1730, causing major delays to most routes although the St Werburgh’s Road to Victoria service was running as normal. Whilst the tram was removed from Piccadilly Gardens all Bury-Altrincham services ran direct with Eccles line services running to Victoria rather than Piccadilly.
Following these problems a media statement was released by Transport for Greater Manchester apologising for the delays people had experienced during these two days. In the statement it was confirmed that both trams that failed were T68s and TfGM reiterated their desire to replace some of these with the newer M5000s.
Philip Purdy, TfGM’s Metrolink Director, said: “’We fully appreciate that any disruption to services can be annoying, but that it’s felt particularly keenly at the busiest times, when people are making their way home from a hard day at work, so I’d like to apologise to anyone who was affected. ‘While we know that it simply wasn’t an acceptable level of service, we endeavoured to keep all our customers informed and have people on the ground to provide support. In both cases, services were affected by faults with the older
vehicles from the fleet – known as T68s. There are 32 in total and the vast majority of them have been in service since 1992, so they are nearly 20 years old. They are considerably less reliable than the new yellow-and-silver M5000s and we’re fully aware of how that can affect the reliability of services. That is why we are investing in replacing 12 of these original – and oldest – trams with brand new M5000s.’