Transport for Greater Manchester have confirmed that services to Rochdale Town Centre will remain suspended until further notice as its unsafe to run trams between Derker and Shaw and Crompton following a landslip. With this issue set to be affecting things for some time its also announced that dedicated bus replacements will be in place daily from Monday 15th July.
As we reported earlier in the week, trams have only been able run as far as East Didsbury since the start of Wednesday 10th July after the land movement was discovered between Derker and Shaw and Crompton. TfGM have now said that track and other equipment has been affected by this and detailed investigations are ongoing to identify the cause. Specialist teams are being brought in to help fix it.
Pete Sommers, TfGM’s Network Director for Metrolink, said: “I’m sorry for the impact this will have on people’s journeys. The decision to suspend services is not taken lightly but is absolutely the right thing to do to ensure the safety of our passengers, staff, and the wider public. We are working hard to understand what is causing this and ultimately how we fix it, but this is a complex and serious incident that is unlikely to be quickly resolved. We will of course ensure customers are kept fully up to date and will provide further information as soon as we have it.”
Until the problem is solved services from East Didsbury will only be operating as far as Oldham Mumps. Frequencies remain the same which means there is a tram every 6 minutes at peak times as this includes the usual Shaw and Crompton turnbacks.
As well as ticket acceptance on local bus services and Northern Rail services from Rochdale to Manchester Victoria there will be a replacement bus service.
From Monday 15th July a full replacement bus service is in operation with details of this to follow. Its also been possible to run a limited bus service on Friday 12th and Saturday 13th July which sees a bus every 30 minutes but this can’t run on Sunday 14th July because of engineering works at Altrincham.