{"id":14823,"date":"2016-06-04T20:00:48","date_gmt":"2016-06-04T19:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=14823"},"modified":"2016-06-04T20:00:48","modified_gmt":"2016-06-04T19:00:48","slug":"balloon-versus-taxi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=14823","title":{"rendered":"Balloon versus Taxi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The number of accidents involving trams and motor cars in Blackpool seems to have escalated recently, with at least three such incidents in May alone. The latest mishap occurred on Saturday 28th May, involving a member of the heritage fleet &#8211; <strong>Balloon 715<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>As mentioned previously on this website, the Metropole hotel has become a hot spot for near-misses between trams and cars as here road traffic must cross the tramway to access the car park itself. Only a few weeks after a taxi drove into the path of an oncoming Flexity tram, history repeated itself with another taxi colliding with <strong>715<\/strong>. Thankfully no serious damage was done to the 1990s liveried Balloon car, which appears to have sustained some lifeguard damage and some slightly grazed paintwork. However, the tram service was seriously disrupted whilst the various necessary checks were made and the accident was documented.<\/p>\n<p>The regularity with which cars are running into trams is becoming a real cause for concern, indeed anyone would think that Blackpool motorists hadn&#8217;t had 131 years to get used to the trams! Other than completely blocking access to the tracks by other vehicles, there is probably not much that can be done to solve the problem but it is certainly hoped that the recent spate of accidents is just a fluke and will not continue over the remainder of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The number of accidents involving trams and motor cars in Blackpool seems to have escalated recently, with at least three such incidents in May alone. The latest mishap occurred on Saturday 28th May, involving a member of the heritage fleet &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=14823\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14823"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14824,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14823\/revisions\/14824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}