Record year on the Metro

THE Midland Metro just had its busiest ever year, with an average of one person getting on a tram every five seconds.

There were 6.2 million journeys on the West Midlands tram system in 2016/17, new figures from the Department for Transport show. This is equivalent to almost 17,000 people using it a day, or one person using it every five seconds.

Last year was the first time the journey total passed six million annually, breaking the previous record of 5.4 million, which was set back in 2000/01.

Passengers collectively travelled 40.8 million miles on the Metro last year – enough to travel from the Sun to its nearest planet, Mercury.

Two extra stops opened last year, including the stop at New Street station, bringing the total to 26.

However the Metro is still dwarfed in size by the transit systems in London, Manchester and Newcastle.

Manchester Metrolink and the Tyne and Wear Metro each had more than 37 million journeys last year – six times each more than the West Midlands network.

Metrolink in Greater Manchester has 93 stops compared to 26 on the Midland system, while Tyne and Wear has 60 stops. The breakdown is as follows: 2010/11 – 4.8 million journeys 2011/12 – 4.9 million journeys 2012/13 – 4.8 million journeys 2013/14 – 4.7 million journeys 2014/15 – 4.4 million journeys 2015/16 – 4.8 million journeys 2016/17 – 6.2 million journeys