Two men in their 50s have been taken to hospital within a few days of each other at the end of July following separate incidents involving Manchester Metrolink trams.
In the first incident at around 1845 on Friday 24th July a cyclist was taken to hospital with serious but not life-threatening injuries after he was hit by a tram at Benchill tramstop on the Airport line.
Whilst the incident was dealt with Metrolink services were suspended between Robinswood Road and Roundthorn.
Then, on Wednesday 29th July a man suffered potentially life-changing injuries after he got trapped climbing into the space between two coupled trams at Market Street tramstop.
A major Police incident was declared with a cordon in place around the tramstop both whilst the man was freed and also after he was taken to hospital to aid an investigation.
In this latter incident trams from Bury terminated at Victoria with those from Ashton being turned at Piccadilly.
No tram operator can manage effectively to prevent incidents caused by dangerous or illegal antics. At least the Metrolink benefits from a second city crossing which should alleviate any disruption caused by incidents such as that on 29th July. I often wonder whether Blackpool would benefit from a second town route linking North to South to overcome the problem with periodic promenade closures. Given the fact that this occurs only a handful of times during the year, I expect that the cost would prove prohibitive to say the least. Presumably, like Blackpool, Metrolink would have something along the lines of ODAS which hopefully would reduce incidents with other road users including cyclists.
San Francisco (which has the closest style Tram and operation to Metrolink) has tapes across between the cars, like the retractable barrier tape. Surely something like this is now needed on Metrolink? The Blackpool twin sets had similar at one time.
Several US systems have coupled units which pose the same problem as Manchester. Los Angeles, which runs either 2 or 3 coupled units depending on requirements) has barriers on the platforms which prevent access to the space between the coupled units.
San Diego also runs up to three coupled units but they have no additional equipment installed either on the units or platforms to stop access to the space between units so very much the same situation as Manchester. Also low level stop heights so easier to access even between stops, but no cause of concern for them.
Surely ODAS is a forward-facing anti-collision system? It wouldn’t help in the case of someone apparently trying to stand on the coupling between two units operating together.
Nor could it prevent a cyclist trying to cross in front of a tram, as apparently happened.
A LiDAR based system is being developed for the M5000s that aims to alert drivers to people who find themselves between coupled vehicles.
Fine, but why would these people find themselves between vehicles in the first place?
There’s nowt tha’ can do ’bout eejots, tha’ noes.!
As I understand it Metrolink has a system based on LIDAR in development to attempt to deal with this problem. Deterrents such as flexible ‘bunjee’ type cords would not really be acceptable as they would actually like a step ladder allowing folks to climb in between the cars in a similar way to the inter-car cables on Class 390 and 800 series units which caused some concerns when first introduced.
san Francisco uses ‘tapes’ like queue barriers which work fine and are too flimsy to climb.