It has been revealed that passenger numbers on Manchester Metrolink have now reached 50% of pre-Covid levels during the week while weekends are seeing between 60% and 70%. This confirms the trend seen on public transport elsewhere in the UK where leisure travel is now more popular than travel for work.<\/p>\n
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Passenger numbers on Metrolink have been fluctuating ever since March 2020, reaching a low in April 2020. With lockdowns and restrictions in place for many of the months since passenger numbers have got nowhere near the pre-pandemic level but for the week of 23rd<\/sup> August it reached the highest level since of almost 470,000. The reduced timetable introduced at the end of July, coupled with engineering works, had seen a slight fall in that period but things are now on the up once more. It is also expected that September will see further increases now the schools are back.<\/p>\n The well-publicised staff shortages during the summer as a result of self-isolating after being pinged by the NHS Covid app also had an impact on reliability of the service. Reliability performance had been holding fairly steady at around 97% up until then but in period 4 (27th<\/sup> June to 24th<\/sup> July 2021) it fell drastically to 92.7% leading to the 12 month rolling average declining to 96.5%.<\/p>\n Tram availability has also seen a fall in recent months with the latest two periods (3 \u2013 30th<\/sup> May to 26th<\/sup> June \u2013 and 4 \u2013 27th<\/sup> June to 24th<\/sup> July) seeing just 84.3% and 83.4% respectively available. Criminal damage was the main cause of this with smashed saloon windows, damaged seats and interior graffiti all requiring vehicles to be removed from service. This was a big problem during the Euro 2020 screenings at Event City where a total of 19 trams were damaged resulting in the need to introduce operational mitigations to protect the vehicles and infrastructure.<\/p>\n The latest Metrolink report also confirms that compliance of the wearing of face coverings on board the trams has seen a fall with only around 50% of passengers wearing. Although no longer law it remains part of the conditions of carriage on Metrolink.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It has been revealed that passenger numbers on Manchester Metrolink have now reached 50% of pre-Covid levels during the week while weekends are seeing between 60% and 70%. This confirms the trend seen on public transport elsewhere in the UK … Continue reading