Having recently successfully argued that they ran an essential service and been awarded additional government funding to keep services running, the Blackpool Tramway has announced a further reduction to the timetable as from Sunday 8th November. With England back under lockdown restrictions from 5th November and the illuminations being suspended its felt that a lower frequency service will suffice until further notice (and there probably isn’t much argument against that!).
With services on the Blackpool Tramway having been operating every 15 minutes during the day since the end of August to take into account extra visitors for the illuminations this will change from 8th November with the frequency reducing to a more standard winter timetable of every 20 minutes. The evening service will be further reduced to a tram every 30 minutes.
Blackpool Transport are also making some changes to bus timetables from the same date although the tramway is the only service to see changes to the weekday timetable at this stage.
So far, no other tramways have announced a reduced timetable since the Prime Minister confirmed the additional lockdown.