Edinburgh Trams have revealed that average weekly passenger numbers – not including the launch week – are currently sitting at 90,000; this is in line with forecasts. During the first week of service 130,000 passengers were carried including 40,000 during the launch weekend.
Tom Norris, Director and General Manager of Edinburgh Trams, was pleased with the figures: “We are still in the very early days of a brand new service but with an extremely busy launch week, a major concert at Murrayfield and a huge public interest in the new service, we’ve experienced a lot already. These early figures are a positive sign and very much in line with forecasts for this stage but we’ll have a clearer view of how things are going much further down the line. Our next focus is on Edinburgh’s busy festival season when, along with Lothian Buses, we’ll be moving thousands of local and and visiting festival goers around the city. This is a big opportunity for us in terms of selling tickets but also to further expose a successfully operational Edinburgh Trams service to visitors from across the world.”
Cllr Lesley Hinds, Transport Convener and Chair of Transport for Edinburgh, added: “These are encouraging figures and I’m pleased to note that they are in line with expectations. It’s been great to see how quickly people have embraced tram travel. Trams have already become an established part of daily life in Edinburgh and I’ve heard lots of positive feedback about how they’ve made people’s commute easier and how smooth the journey is, and so on. Obviously these are still early days and we’ll continue to keep a close eye on how things are going, picking up and dealing with any issues as we go along. We’d encourage everyone to keep on giving us their feedback and suggestions so that we can deliver the best possible service.”
The business model released before trams started to run set a target for passenger numbers of 4,555,000 for the first year. Edinburgh Trams will be giving a further update on patronage after the first 100 days of operation has been reached.
Passenger numbers remain high for Edinburgh Trams. This view shows an unidentified tram moving away from the camera on 2nd June 2014. (Photo: Steve Kemp)
Probably the most comfortable trams that I have travelled on. Nice leather seats and good leg room. Suspect the area allocated to luggage is higher than needed but they do serve the airport.
I wonder how long it will be before the popularity of the service results in the reinstatement of plans to extend to Leith or even further?
Excellent News. Finally turning a corner. Hopefully after the judge led autopsy of what went wrong in terms of delivering the first phase will help ensure future extensions both in Edinburgh and beyond do not fall foul of similar mistakes
I do hope that the VERY necessary inquest into what went wrong with the construction of this tramway will not prevent the system from proceeding speedily to Phase Two, the extension to Leith. May I suggest that the French be brought in to do the construction? (The Auld Alliance and all that!)