As extensively reported on British Trams Online due to major improvement works at Victoria, Manchester Metrolink services through this area are being altered for next nine months with single line working only possible through the station area.
Single line operation commenced on Monday 24th February and saw the revised service in use for the first time. This sees a tram every 12 minutes run between Bury and Altrincham, a shuttle service between Bury and Abraham Moss every 12 minutes and a normal service between Rochdale Railway Station and East Didsbury. The Ashton-under-Lyne line will be served by trams from Eccles whilst services remain in operation from Altrincham to Piccadilly and MediaCityUK to Piccadilly.
On the first day of the new service some congestion was noted with the revised operation and the photos below – kindly provided by Ken Walker – show some of the operations in the vicinity of Victoria on 24th February 2014.
When the single line working is going well its the best that could be done, indeed today 32 minutes from Radcliffe to St Peters Square, however at about 2140 last night there was a points failure in the single line section, so 1hr 20 minutes after leaving st peters square got home to Radcliffe, sat on the same tram all the way.
I watched 2 135 buses go by as when it all went tits up I was inbetween market street and Shudehill.
The twitter feed of metrolink for mon, tues, weds has been alive with people getting very very fed up of delays after delays for various reasons. One wonders if the custom metrolink are losing to the bus services will return. i feel that if services do not get back to some sort of consistent reliability they may well suffer in the long term.
As you say nigel,when its working it is the best you will get.The problem is that there is no spare capacity built in.Its all been timed down to the last minute.As you would have noticed its working on the token system of single line working,but with a slight twist.They can send two or more vehicles through at once if needed.
The problem seems to be with the points on Balloon street on the out bound side,they just don’t seem to be up to the job.As regards loosing passengers to the buses,this was the case during previous shutdowns in the town centre.But eventually they do tend to drift back.